Travis County Commssioners Court
December 2, 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.
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next. One citizen, the honorable ronnie earle, accompanied by the honorable vicki skinner have signed in. [laughter]
>> good morning, your honor.
>> good morning.
>> it's nice to be in such honorable company.
>> [laughter]
>> we have some good news for the court this morning.
>> all right.
>> this is in the nature of something of an early christmas present. You will recall that last year we applied for and received a grant of $185,000 through the bureau of justice assistance as part of the southwest border prosecution initiative. What that is is where the justice department provides money to local jurisdictions for the pros ciewtion of federal -- prosecution and holding of federal prisoners. Our prisoners with federal holding on them. We have done that again and applied for those monies again and gotten a grant of $87,500. We are making it available to the county, you can do with it whatever you want. It's our christmas present to the court, an early christmas present. Counties in arizona, california, new mexico and Texas can apply to receive serial funds -- to receive federal funds to support the prosecution and detention of federally referred criminal cases. Last year, judge Biscoe and Commissioner Gomez brought our attention to this matter. And vicki skinner, who is the director of administration for the district attorney's office, and others in the d.a.'s office, put together an application and got that money last year and again this year. For a total over the two years of $272,500. That -- that is unexpected income. Now, when we did this ourselves, now, the original information that we got was that a company called virtex would complete the application process on behalf of the local jurisdictions. With you we discovered that we could do it ourselves and save the 15% fee that virtex would have charged. So we did that ourselves with our own personnel and got 15% more money than we would have otherwise. So -- so another entity that needs to be given credit for this is integrated justice system because we would not have been able to locate those cases and specifically the information that was required had it not been for the information available through the sheriff's and district attorney's modules that are part of the integrated justice system. So this was an example of collaboration between agencies and within our office, that has resulted in something of a windfall for Travis County taxpayers.
>> that's good news. When you say we may use it as we wish, you mean any lawful and governmental county business.
>> as an officer of the court, I think that's the only thing that you will ever use money for.
>> absolutely.
>> [inaudible - no mic] the district attorney feels very strongly about proactive ways to keep folks from coming into our justice system. [inaudible - no mic]
>> I'm sure there will be four other suggestions on what to do with the money, but I will stick it out there about the after school initiative.
>> the best way to drain the bathtub is to shut off the water first that doesn't take a whole lot of money. To quote a famous philosopher in conclusion, judge, members, ho, ho, ho, merry christmas.
>> I have a question. I guess we are all -- we will all be happy to have -- you -- to have $87,000. But when we fill out an application or make an application for a grant, is there a place, I mean, obviously there's a place that we have to put what we are going to use the grant for. I mean, is there an assumption that we are going to use this for something in your office, or is this something that you know what we are going to give you this money. Or do we ever say you know what? We don't have that need. Now, we have a lot of needs in Travis County, I don't want to say we don't want $87,500, we would be crazy to do that. What happens in this kind of a deal, there's bound to be someplace where you have to answer, yes, in order for us to receive this 87-5, we are going to do this with it.
>> this actually is not a grant. It's a reimbursement. See, this is for money that we have already expended for prosecution and incarceration of federally detained prisoners. So it's money that we have already spent. It's just we just get it back this way.
>> oh.
>> so it's not like we are having to apply for a grant to use for x, y, z purposes.
>> oh, that's great. I didn't understand that. I mean, I thought it was just -- because I am amazed at how many things we can seem to get and it's like you might be using moneys for things other than what the purpose was -- you know, intended, which is -- you know, I suppose I should be happy that the federal government is not always as attending to doling out all of these dollars, I'm amazed at what kind of a checkbook d.c. Seems to have from $87 billion for things to 87-5 for things. But I mean if this is money that we have spent in the county, then this is a reimbursement, then I understand that, I think that's great.
>> this -- we were provided with a way to apply for a reimbursement. We have to show that we have spent this money on prisoners that were held in our jail. But in that sense it's an application. By it is simply to reimburse the county for the costs of the detention. I'm going to come before the court perhaps next week or as soon as we put the numbers together to show you the savings to the county of the rocket docket since the rocket docket's inception which is considerable.
>> great.
>> any idea about how much money we have spent on the program this this reimbursement --
>> how much money we spent on housing and prosecuting federally detained prisoners?
>> right.
>> best we can tell, about pretty much what we are being reimbursed for.
>> 87,000.
>> actually, this is a very generous reimbursement.
>> maybe we ought to leave it right there.
>> [laughter]
>> in recognition of our hard work.
>> we don't want the feds to think they are sending too much down here.
>> too often we are complaining about an unfunded mandate. This is finally a funded mandate. We need to do our job, but the feds realized that we were doing something on their behalf, they needed to pick up the tab.
>> also, I want to thank Commissioner Gomez and judge Biscoe for bringing our -- this to our attention to start with. After that happened, then we started plugging in the --
>> the numbers.
>> -- in the information and took it from there. Thank you very much.
>> thank you all again, we appreciate it.
>> anybody else under citizens communication whether you signed in or not, that is to address the court on any matter not on the agenda.
>> yeah, judge. I have a few things. As you know we have lost a great pioneer in this city of Austin. O.b. Conley, a real big writeup today in the metro state section. She's going to be a tremendous loss to all of us. Even a teacher at kealing junior high, I can still see her telling us to do the right thing as kids. And she had an influence in my life. And she's had a lot of influence on a lot of folks' lives here, in the city of Austin. She's going to be tremendously missed. And understand that the -- that the funeral is still pending at the king of tears. We want to let the public know that we have lost a strong advocate of a lot of good things that have happened here in this community.
>> right.
>> of Austin, Travis County.
>> uh-huh.
>> she's going to be sorely missed. Wanted to let everybody know that.
>> thank you.
>> most of us know her.
>> uh-huh.
>> I got here kind of late, only 34 years ago, but she influenced my life quite a bit too.
>> it's nice to know in terms of naming of the conley-guerrero center that she was remembered at the time that she was still --
>> uh-huh.
>> just want to acknowledge that.
>> my condolences in the community.
>> okay.
>> ms. English.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners. I'm not here to talk on an item of the agenda at this point. I was watching your meeting last week and you had a long segment of air quality, non-attainment, everybody was talking about taking a columbus all of this. One of the things this that I had talked to capital metro several years ago, I believe they do have a program in place, but I have never seen it really work. I used to work downtown, worked downtown for 15 to almost 17 years and one of the things that I noticed at lunch time is that everybody gets in their car to go somewhere. Either lunch or do an errand or something like that. One of the things that I thought that -- that could be implemented in a better fashion because if they have -- if capital metro has a plan, I don't see it working, is where everybody could take the bus to go to lunch. If -- if the capital metro would work with the restaurant industry, and have a route where -- where a bus would go around every five minutes, preferably a clean air -- clean fuel columbus so everybody could hop in, boost the restaurant industry, but at the same time it would make a lot of people in suits take the columbus which right now nobody takes. One of the things that I hated, I didn't want to walk downtown because it was too hot, everybody takes their car, you have an enormous amount of cars during the lunch hour which could stay in place and everybody should take the columbus I think that would be a -- a good way to get people to take the bus. We never think about -- who never think about taking the bus or who would take the bus for a lunch time use, I just thought that would be a suggestion that we would put out in the public forum since capital metro, every time that I have called them, they say oh, we already have that plan. But somehow I didn't see anybody taking the bus at lunch time to go anywhere. I just thought that I would --
>> thank you, I will pass that on.
>> we will add that to our list of air quality measures.
>> okay. Trek?
>> yeah.
>> there is a program as they told you.
>> yeah.
>> it's the dillo that runs free from 11:00 to 2:00.
>> right.
>> and it's the six clarity, I think -- the circulator, I think three colors, they are running that program right now. As a matter of fact Commissioner Sonleitner and I went to one of our lunches a few weeks ago via the free dillo.
>> but not enough people are actually aware of it, that's the biggest problem. I think the restaurants need to push it.
>> no, they are aware of it. But unfortunately there are more people that do walk to the lunch places than take the dillo. This is not -- I don't mean this is not a bash at capital metro, they have done what they can do. They have put a circulator out there, they have tried everything within their power to do this. The Commissioner and I missed the columbus just like two minutes -- missed the bus two minutes, we ended up having to wait 20 minutes for the next bus so we were really late getting to our destination. Now that's not capital metro's fault. I mean because somebody would say what you need to do is put twice as many buses on the street --
>> 20 minutes is not, you need to have one every five minutes.
>> if you miss the bus by two minutes, then your next columbus the about us that we caught we had to wait 20 minutes. They are trying but I will tell you that it is very, very difficult to get people to use it as their major mode of how they are going to get, whether it's to lunch or from their place of employment to lunch. Because what people find out is that it's very, very difficult to really make a scheduled base run. That's what people do. They go you know I'm either going to drive and hopefully go with more than one person, or I'm going to walk. I'm going to find a place to walk. I mean, I --
>> walking is okay.
>> I applaud capital metro for doing what they have done with this project, but unfortunately it hasn't worked as well as what you would like to see.
>> I think they need to put more buses. There's several cities in europe that have that during lunch time. The restaurants actually work to be on that route. They stop, you know, about every five minutes you can hop in and out real fast. That's what they really need to do. The business community in the center of this city that needs to really come forward and say we want to promote this so people don't drive.
>> one of the big problems right now, there's still a lot of construction going on downtown and we have used the dillo routes a lot to do precisely what you have said. But the routes are all mixed and they can't get to certain places on a consistent time simply because we have a lot of detours down in that 4th through 6th area. Until we get some of this construction out of the way, there -- some consistency.
Last Modified: Tuesday, December 3, 2003 6:52 AM