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Travis County Commssioners Court
December 16, 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 25

View captioned video.

25. Consider and give staff direction on how to proceed to address problems with elevators in the criminal justice center.
>> good afternoon, judge and Commissioners, alicia perez, executive manager for administrative operations. I believe judge you placed this on the agenda. We had sent an e-mail last week as an update on the item for the elevators. There are nine elevators at the criminal justice center. Four of those are public elevators located in the lobby. We have been tracking complaints and service calls to those elevators for about 31 months. We have some preliminary data to share with you, in part of what we sent out as your backup. Part of the preliminary data which tracks the service calls, the amount of time that the elevators were down and it also talks about the traffic of individuals visiting the courtrooms and most of that, as the information notes, is when -- we seem to have major problems on Mondays and Fridays. Court dates are set between -- court times between 8:30 and 9:00, so we have two to 300, 400 people showing up for 12 courts right around the same time. If there is one problem or one elevator that is down, it does cause major congestion. The last several years, we have done several things to try to alleviate some of the down time and facilitate the traffic. We have two of the elevators that are designated express during the peak hours. We have had in the past and continue to have an individual that's there to -- to direct people to the right elevator and -- and guide them to the floor that they are going to. Previously we have also had individuals at the information desk. We don't have them there anymore, I believe they are working for the court administrator now. We may need to look at putting someone to the information desk again. Sometimes people come without their slips, sometimes they can't literally read their sign, they don't know where they are going, they know that we are supposed to show up this that building but not what court. A lot of times they don't speak english. So I think we may need to take another look at having an individual there, especially in those time periods that I mentioned. Staff, roger o corey and jim bar and john carr have been doing the analysis on the elevators and are here to present the data and some possible preliminary recommendations even though we don't have a final solution for you today. Roger el khoury, good afternoon, judge and Commissioners. I would like to make a presentation on the elevators. We have charts, we would like to go over that. Just to get you oriented the main entry for the building is at the top. The building has [indiscernible] elevator as shown. The only available for transportation by the public to the court are elevators 3, 4, 5, 6, elevator 1, 2, 8 are prisoners transport elevators and elevator number 7 is the judge's elevator. Elevator number 9 is the maintenance service elevator. All of these elevator except 8 and 9 are traction elevator, the type of elevators suspended from overhead cables. The elevators were manufactured by [indiscernible] this is a manufacturer for those elevators we have. The maintenance and repair of county elevators are performed by an outside contractor who has a five-year contract to provide these services. We spent about $75,000 per year for this contract, which covers our 38 elevators which [indiscernible] management maintains. This is equal to 1 ... Per year. We require a response time from one hour from any elevator from the contractor if any elevator went down. The public elevator serving the court floor of the c.j.c. With have not been able to get with the number of visitors going to court especially on Monday and Friday. I'm just confirming what alicia note earlier. But here approximately two years ago, we start an express elevator service for the public elevator on Monday and Friday morning. From 8:00 a.m. Until 10:00 a.m., At this time elevator number 5 serves floor 4, 5, 6. While elevator number 6 service floors 7, 8, 9. Elevator 3 and 4 continue to service all floors. Our firm also provide a [indiscernible] during this time to assist visitor in choosing the proper elevator and to ensure the elevator are properly loaded. Also directional signs are provided on the c.j.c. Elevator area. Our firm conducted a survey of this service call on all elevator for period of April 2001 up to December 2003. 31 months period. The agenda is -- [indiscernible] total service calls for the c.j.c. Elevator over this period of time. Again the public at the present time elevator are number 3, 4, 5, 6 that we are concentrating on. Over this time period, we logged 30 calls for elevator number 5, 33 calls for elevator number 3, and 36 calls for both elevator 4 and 5. One item that jumps out on this chart that is the elevator 8 and 9. Both has significant fewer calls. These are hydraulic elevators which are slow and our review across the county buildings reflect that this type of elevator tend to be more reliable. But this type of elevator is limited in the number of floors that they can serve and are usually used for four floor and less. And they are slow elevator as I mentioned. So really the higher floor after four floor [indiscernible] traction elevator. John is putting another chart show the number of service call elevator in the other nine county building maintained by f.m. These scales on this chart are the same as on the c.j.c. Chart. The only other building where public elevator had 30 or more service calls is the executive office building. Eob. And however these elevators are more than 30 years old. That's our point to show we have similar calls for similar type of elevators. One we have only three years old, the other one was 30 years old. The next are both the freight elevators. At the c.j.c. We looked at the severity of the calls. Broke down into three categories. John is going to put another chart. On that. Okay. Those three categories are minor, medium or major. We consider those calls where the elevator remain in service but has problems such as light burned out, running slow or door closing slowly. As a minor call. Shown on the chart as a green bar. The majority of the service call we classify as medium. Which in our definition are any call where it is necessary for maintenance contractor to respond to put the elevator back in service and where the outage was only two day or less. This is as shown in the brown bars. Major outage lasting over two doors or where the operation of the elevator involve a safety hazard such as not leveling out correctly at the floor level. Any time we get the call on the elevator this is priority to facility management. We respond right away. And we have a service contractor we call them to come in and he will come within one hour. That's what we have a one hour time response. Well, this is the nature of the problem right now. We will try to break it down big problem to small to see what the trend is, where we are you know the problems. One more thing is the, as you can see the yellow bar are major problems, those are I believe elevator number 3, 4 and 6. We did some kind of a call around to other counties, I just want to give you this for information only. That f.m. Has discussed that experience with the elevator. Harris county has a similar problem with capacity in their newly constructed c.j.c. In their case they installed an additional elevator to small the upper 10 floors of their facility. It's about 21 floors. Harris county also has a elevator similar to ours. They said after the initial operation period, about one year, the elevators have proven to be reliable. Harris county also agreed to provide a copy of their service contract for us so we can review and see what we can benefit from it. For information, harris county has 93 elevators and they pay about $480,000 per year for maintenance service. This is about [indiscernible] per lflt per year, they require a 15 minute response to outage call. Compared to Travis County 1,615 per year per elevator, but we have one hour of response time. They have 15. So we are trying to again get some kind of a -- some input from them, also, to share and probably we can improve our elevators. So where do we go from here --
>> very quickly, I know has harris county obviously has a different building, but how many public elevators do we have for their building to kind of get a accepts of how many -- how are they distributing --
>> let me find out.
>> I know that information.
>> yes, ma'am.
>> if you know offhand that's great.
>> I do, ma'am. In their criminal justice center they have five elevators that service the first 10 floors and currently six elevators that service the top floors.
>> it's really not that much different.
>> no. But again the reason that I mentioned this is for comparison to other counties similar and in the area we are having the problem with, but in our construction of the c.j.c. We don't have any space to put another elevator, so this is very kind of like -- very expensive solution. So we don't recommend it from facility management. Multiple multi-
>> harris county c.j.c. Have.
>> I believe it's 20 floors, sir.
>> f.m. Continues to review the trend [indiscernible] at c.j.c., At this point what we would like to recommend that the court give f.m. Direction and funding to bring in a nationally known elevator consultant to evaluate our elevator to ensure that we are getting the best possible performance from this particular elevator. I'm talking about 3, 4, 5 and 6. The consultant can provide the recommendation on scheduling, reliability, safety, performance,, energy conservation, efficiency and whether the elevators are properly maintained by our maintenance contractor. This is our recommendation at this time. I believe continued -- continue documenting the problems and have now ample data for the last 31 months so we can share with the expert to see how can we really improve the performance. Just briefly what we have right now. Would you like any question, would like to answer any questions.
>> on service calls, at the c.j.c., On the elevators in comparison to c.j.c. In houston, I -- are they basically running comparable or do we have any data on that? As far as the service call on the elevator itself?
>> sir, we have requested that from harris county. They have not been able to provide that yet. But verbally he told me that their outages are fairly infrequent, but they do have people full time in the downtown complex to respond immediately to any outages that occur.
>> can you speak in the mic, please.
>> thank you.
>> all right, sir, i'll try again. Yes. They are going to provide us their outage data. They have not com miled it for -- compiled it for us, yet. He did verbally tell me, my counterpart, that their experience has been that their outages are fairly infrequent but they also have pull full-time assigned downtown to downtown complex that can respond to within that 15 minute window. So they have people that are actually on site all the time. As project he mentioned earlier, they are -- as roger mentioned earlier they are paying a premium price for that service.
>> basically looking at downtown which apparently this may be in particular situations. [indiscernible] at least how does someone else address that situation when the elevators need service calls, I'm kind of concerned about the frequency of serving calls and how they can be maybe reduced in possible. Of course I really don't know the answer to all of those things. But again you did very much report to us as far as what harris county is doing, there's an associated cost benefit. But at least downtown with the elevators or something that they may have been able to reduce either address in when that happens, so thank you.
>> I have about three questions. How do we use elevators one and two?
>> go ahead.
>> number 1 and 2 are prisoner transport elevators. Not available for public at all.
>> you want me to talk?
>> go ahead, please.
>> elevators 1 and 2 go from the court holding area and every morning tell bring buses from del valle, prisoners have a waiting area down there. So elevators 1 and 2 transport the prisoners up through the secure core of the building to the court floors.
>> can you access 1 and 2 from the public lobby?
>> no, sir. There's a -- they are not even -- there are not even any doors that open up on to the public lobby. On the court floors those doors open up into the jail portion of the core that runs up through the middle of the building between the two courtrooms, they are strictly for prisoner transport.
>> okay.
>> do the stairwells open to the first floor lobby?
>> they technically do. But they have controls on them for security.
>> I understand. It always occurred to me after we learned how slow the elevators work that during certain times there would be no problem with saving -- [indiscernible] from 8:00 to 10:00, from -- if employees won't to walk why wouldn't we have them open. Even if it requires additional security to be posted in the entrance. But if the elevators were open, you would be able to access the stairwell from the lobby.
>> yes, sir.
>> right near the metal detectors set up?
>> there's actually two that would be available. One is over at the courthouse security office, which is just to the right hand on the screen there. The other is around the lower part right below elevators 1 and 2.
>> well, why don't we do this: why don't we have the county personnel -- none of the lawyers have i.d., Right? Do we have a new lawyer i.d. System where they wouldn't have to go through the metal detector?
>> judge. Last time, my information is that everyone has to go through the -- the lawyers do have to go through the metal detector. I will double check on that.
>> the question to me I guess is not whether you go through metal detectors but whether you have an i.d., Lawyer i.d. I remember.
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> okay. Let us check on that.
>> what I am about to suggest is that even if the client is running late, if the lawyer can go by the courtroom and indicate the presence and waiting on the client, I think that would solve some of the problem. The other thing is on mop and Friday, several lawyers have told me that sometimes they can walk between the floors, they are on the 9th floor, they have a case on the 7th, they walk on down. Sometimes apparently they can walk. Using the stairs, stoims they cannot. What's the policy on that?
>> the court, the original pom was with the judges' preference as expressed during the meetings at the building, the original policy was to keep that stairwell locked because -- and that was in concurrence with courthouse security. The lawyers certainly wanted to have access so that they could go between two or three floors. But I know that recently I have seen some of those doors are unlocked, that it has been possible to go back and forth. I'm not sure how they got unlocked. But --
>> originally it was locked, you know,.
>> I can understand that. But I guess if security is the reason it would make sense to me to try to have a strategy where we could ensure lawyers only had access to stairwells. That would reduce the traffic some. If you have civil cases and criminal cases, you are trying to go to c. J. C. To take care of your business, go over to the civil courts building, vice versa, but as a lawyer you were trying to get to more than one court sometimes in a short time. So if the elevator were in the -- is unavailable immediately, then it does seem to me that we ought to try to sit down with the sheriff and promote security as much as we can. Maybe sit with the defense bar, try to figure out for those willing to take the stairs, willing to walk, what's the best way to get it done. If we are not using those name tags or i.d.'s that we said that we would get to the lawyers, maybe now is the time to start doing it. That issue come up because lawyers complained about going through the metal detector. We said okay maybe we will treat you like a county employee. County employees in the buildings have name tags, they --
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>>
>> county employees still have to go through.
>> yeah. There's also, I might mention, there's an efficiency in going on the stairs, from the lobby, there's lots of loops to go up in there. There's lots of time between each floor, it's quite a distance to go up to the first lobby to the fourth floor on the stairs.
>> but if they are willing to do it. The issue is in terms of -- those are supposed to be the fire escapes. They are supposed to have a way to get you out of the building. That's the problem if you went out of the building, you would have -- you would be opening up a secure entrance into the building. It's supposed to be one way out. But if we could post somebody there during those hours that basically says you are not allowed to go out that door and to make sure that one does go outside that door, they basically go up and down the staircase seems like that might be a way to get around it. It might only be for certain hours on certain day that's we need to have a relief valve there. That would certainly be a whole lot cheaper to station somebody there for a couple of hours, x number of kays a week as opposed to take some of the pressure off of those elevators, maybe it gets restricted as the judge suggested to those that have some kind of an i.d. Badge are the only one that's can use that. We don't want to make the publishing through there.
>> so number 7 is the judge's elevator.
>> that's for the elected officials, yes, sir.
>> and is it accessible from the lobby?
>> no.
>> from the parking garage.
>> it goes from the barking level down below the galt building and runs up into, it runs up by the strea's office, then it goes up to each of the court floors at the judge's chamber area.
>> is it accessible from the public lobby?
>> no, sir, it's not. There's no entrance to it at that floor.
>> no, sir. That's secure. That is secure. It was designed only to be for the judges. And their staff and it goes right to the --
>> I understand what the initial -- [multiple voices]
>> open to secure areas where the general public is not allowed.
>> that's correct.
>> but right now you can't access it from the public lobby anyway.
>> there's not even a door in the first floor.
>> one strategy that I do have is for the lawyers who go up and down those floors every day, I mean, we could easily identify them. And my view would be during certain times if you are on the 9th floor trying to get to the 8th, we would help you. Even if we don't allow you taking the stairs from the lobby up, then I would think that between certain floors up and down, during certain times, during the docket call hours, you would think that we would be able to work something out on that. If security is the issue, I would think that we would be able to handle -- to address the security issue in other ways. I'm not saying let's just give up on security. The question would be, though, whether lawyers are really interested in doing that, which we found out by chatting with the defense bar. Several have told me that it would help if they could walk between floors because they are trying to get to different courtrooms. Now let me just one other little area. I had the idea that there are fast elevators that will fit within the space that we now provide for these elevators.
>> yeah.
>> and I guess my question is, is there a way for us to get a -- might be a faster motor in the two elevators that go to the stop top floors on Monday and Fridays, see what I'm saying? If we say okay, 789 -- those are top floors, then we have got elevator number 6 going to them, during peak hours. Is it possible for us to put another engine, elevator engine in -- in that elevator. For floor number 5 and 6 so they could be faster.
>> judge, to give you the right answer I need to consult with the manufacturer of that elevator because this is a major modification to the court. Up and down. So I would like to get some time and consult with the manufacturer and give you an answer back on that.
>> any idea how much it would cost for us to get an expert to look at this issue and give us his opinion?
>> not at this time. We are looking at -- at searching the -- one person up in northeast connecticut that we are looking into, I don't know yet the cost, but I believe you know from a concern it should not be more than about like 5 or $10,000, I'm just putting a number right here. I'm not sure how much. But until I find out, you know, given the scope of work and everything they can give us a proposal on that so that we know how much.
>> all right. Are we satisfied that we are getting good service from the contractor, good response time.
>> yes. Tejas contractor has given us good service because one hour they will respond, you know. That's good.
>> we have had to repair -- we have had to replace some parts more than once.
>> well, this is a part, you know, specifically this is elevator number 6, you know, when the board, you know, went down, you know, the control board went down one time and is unusual for a control board to burn within two years. Then we sent it back to the manufacturer, they fix it, bring it back, down again. Really they were talking about the same elevator for the same problem, so we [indiscernible] one more time. I'm sorry just a second, what, do you want to add anything to it? Okay. It's an electronic circuit that they had for getting elevator 6 up and down that's the one that went down twice.
>> granted private buildings are different from public buildings, but there's a group called boma, building owners management association, I'm wondering if it might be helpful to visit with some of nose large building maintenance folks. I'm just thinking in terms of every time I go over to the bank one tower, those things zoom you up. There's certain things in terms of those elevators move pretty darned fast, granted they don't have the wear and tear that we do. I'm wondering if that might be helpful in terms of visiting some of the large building owners to see what -- how they have handled related to high speed, et cetera, in their maintenance guys --
>> sure. I had one more thing about the strategies if I may. About the trend for the last two years, as you can see, it's from 8:00 to 10:00 on Monday and Friday. On any regular day, let's say Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those elevators are not loaded. They are going in a proper and, you know, normal operation, you know, and the only two time is when we have a problem we get from Monday 8 to 10:00 and Friday 8:00 to 10:00. Is there any way that we are asking that the rescheduling of the court or stagger the court docket or anything just to get rid of that two -- Monday and Friday so we can spread it over the week so we have -- I'm not sure if that's really a possibility. But we think that might help the elevators,, you know, at the c.j.c.
>> anybody ask the judges? Anybody sat down with the judges and asked if they would be amenable to that.
>> well ...
>> well, I guess early on, jim, we haven't lately. I think early on, judge, didn't you also kind of broach that subject with them?
>> not recently, but I did shortly after the building opened because it was a problem then.
>> > looks like if we could ask to see if staggering is possibility, 15 minutes between certain courtrooms. It doesn't mean that it has to be you are stuck with the later time period. They could rotate it. I would leave it to the district judges, but I would certainly ask them how they could be a part of the solution. It just isn't mechanic capitol. If you say everybody has to be in court by 9:00 a.m. It's a recipe for trouble.
>> you are really saying that roughly five percent of the operational time of those elevators we have a problem?
>> thaert.
>> okay. Well then if that's the case, then it doesn't make any sense to spend a katrillion dollars for something on the elevators. That one is out the window. And before you spend $10,000 on a consultant, I mean get the elevator manufacturers, companies, whatever, I bet you every one of them will give you some sort of a free, I mean, what would you do to do these things that wouldn't cost you a dime just in anticipation that they might bet some business out of it but obviously I mean, you know, I was up until the last two minutes, I thought that you had a really mainly issue. I mean it's kind of like a parking lot problem. When it's only 5 percent of the time you have a problem, you have an issue. I do think that the judges thought about well let's offer them a place to walk because I asked when I was over there one of those times waiting for the elevator, I said well, why can't I just walk up, you can't do that. We are still going to take as many complaints I'm sure from attorneys or whoever that's going to have to walk give very much that it is 2004, elevators are supposed to get you from one spot to another. But I would think that sitting down, I bet you the auditor can help us sit down with -- with a few of the judges that we have seemed to, you know, hit some middle ground on cooperating with the judges. On some things. Just asking we have a problem here versus going out and asking for lots of dollars. To do these things. I would think that the staggered part, those kinds of ideas we are bound to be able to sit down with some folks and say, you know, tell us how you would do this.
>> right. You know, I think that -- that the discussion we are having thus far, there's been a lot of good suggestions that have been put forth. But if you were to look at the different suggestions there has to be a dollar amount equated to it as far as the alleviating the problem. So I'm kind of concerned if staff would equate some of the suggestions that's been rendered and see exactly what costs would be attributed at and then of course alleviating the problem altogether, the judge brought up a few points. Maybe using the stairwell, the defense bar, the attorneys not going through the -- treated like the county employees, using the stairway if it's actable, even placing security. Things of that nature that Commissioner Daugherty, Commissioner Sonleitner everybody what kind of brought up some pretty good suggestions, staggering the appearances for the judges. I think all of these equated into money. Savings. And it would be good to I guess hear what they are and also maybe looking at faster operational elevators. That may still need to be something is that need to be looked at. I'm really not comfortable at this point with a lot of things, the correction we may be going with we may need to look at maximizing the best use for elevators of what we are trying to do here. I'm sorry, go ahead.
>> before -- I think one of the things in terms of traffic and scheduling is the jail calls have an enormous number of people and attorneys. The attorneys are moving between courtrooms. And there's two on a floor. So like if they are up on nine and they have got to move down to seven, like the judge said, if they could go down to the steps. But what happens is if they are called in another courtroom, then they don't come, we have wanted to take care of controlling indigent attorneys' fees, if they are not there another attorney gets assigned so they want to officially be able to move. But just the nature of the business, I mean I think your point about looking at the total cost is a good one because if a high speed elevator keeps cases moving and out of our jails more and the indigent attorneys' fees more reasonable that probably san antonio bad expenditure. I don't know if it's that same people. But the traffic pattern over there is complicated and part of it is just a huge on number of people in there moving through that building.
>> at the same time. Is where you get the bottlenecks. But I think there are several areas that we can look at. We can go back to the particular elevator companies. As we were talking I noticed that in 2001 we did have a review by elevator technology consulting company and they talked about the quality of service and the capacity. And I think that you do have to look at the number of people that you are trying to service with those elevators. Because when you have everyone coming in and this very short time period, then the elevators are not being able to service them. But you wouldn't need to have real high speed elevators because you are still going to have the similar similar v values between the floors. So I think there's numerous variables to take a look at. We have asked to set up a meeting with judge wisser so talk to him about the -- about their docketing. And see if there is another perspective or another method of them being able to still get their cases heard.
>> how's this, between -- a Monday morning between 8:00 and 10:00, count the number of people entering one of the elevators on the first floor.
>> we have done that before. We can do that.
>> we need to know exactly what number we are talking about.
>> uh-huh.
>> if we just count the ones that enter, maybe a handful will go, come down, come back again, I would just count them twice.
>> sure.
>> my motion is to chat with the sheriff about access to the stairwells from the lobby floor upward. And between floors starting at -- -- okay, the courts are on 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
>> that's correct.
>> basically lawyers walking between nose floors. -- between those floors, between 8 and 10:00, Monday and Friday, lawyers, I'm assuming we will be able to figure out a way to identify them.
>> okay.
>> so I'm hoping that in partly address some of the security issues. The second part of the motion is for us to contact the manufacturer of our elevator, and the contractor. Get his ideas. And anybody else in Austin Travis County from whom we can get free advice on how to make these elevators more efficient. Now, isn't the first thing that they will ask us will be how many passengers are you talking about, during what time? That's why I think that number is important. We can say we are talking about Monday and Friday between 8:00 and 10:00 and somebody may say we had that problem 10 years ago, here's what we did. May end up being reasonable. The other thing, third party, is to touch base with the judges. Maybe one county court at law judge, maybe a district court judge. Would it help for a member of the Commissioners court to assist with that, or do you think you all got enough pull with the judges to get it done without us? [indiscernible]
>> we will try. [laughter]
>> we will talk to the judges, sure.
>> knowing that the direction is coming from the court, that always helps.
>> the other thing is that if we -- if we count elevator passengers, it may help to determine the number between 8 and 8:30, 8:30 and 9:00, 99:30 and 10:00. It may be between 8:30 and 9:00 is what we get 50% of them. Maybe it should be more earlier, more later. I assume if we had a specific recommendation that may be a little bit more easy to work with than just a general request to work with us on modification the documents. Those are three kind of big areas, did I miss a fourth one? I have kind of held off on seeking outside expert help.
>> I second that motion. But let me ask you this. And this -- in this assessment that you are proposing in the form of a motion, are you basically also including the defense bar, the lawyers to make sure that they are willing to cooperation and --
>> right.
>> because that was an ir. It is an issue.
>> right.
>> if they will be able to go between courtroom stairwells.
>> we can ask the jail overcroding task force, the defense lawyers there, that's one of -- to feel out the lawyers to get them to take it back to their committee. Defense bar committee. But these are the criminal defense lawyers. There. That's who is in that building.
>> uh-huh.
>> so the other -- the good news about that, though, is that the recommendation came from them and i've gotten it from 8 or 9 of them.
>> uh-huh.
>> indicating a willingness to walk between floors. On I don't know that I have gotten that many, I only have one or two that said we ought to walk from the lobby up. The floors are winding, it's a little bit more of a challenge than walking between floors.
>> that's right.
>> really the motion is supposed to be a zero cost, trying to follow up on some of the ideas that we heard about today. Let's see where we go with them, whether it's helping. Some lawyers get kind of irate. Some of these Mondays and Fridays.
>> they are used to suing people. [laughter]
>> yep.
>> what would you -- when would you like to report back to you on all of this action?
>> I think if we can get something back in two or three weeks it would be good.
>> okay.
>> because there may be some schedules with people with christmas holidays. I don't want to -- I don't know who is around and who is not in terms of being -- getting information.
>> I'm hoping there will be a lot more available. Can I ask one more -- can I ask one other question about the facilities management elevator. Does it go into the lobby.
>> facilities management elevator is -- it's -- the service elevator right there.
>> yeah. The service elevator. Does it go into the lobby.
>> yeah. It goes into the lobby mexico to the pretrial services but goes all the way down to our union to the chiller and everything down there?
>> does it go to the upper noors.
>> it does not go to any of the court floors.
>> I wanted to take it off the map that somehow it could be utilize the an is no, thanks. The answer is no, thanks.
>> there's one more thing. Probably judge if you can give us about until like January 20th because sometimes during the holiday you might not have many people from the public coming to those elevators and we don't have the good count. I would like to take like two weeks of a good count union like Monday-friday, Monday-friday so I can get a trend.
>> that's not what I had in mind that's fine with me.
>> okay.
>> I would do this Friday and Monday and have it done.
>> what?
>> well, we don't -- let us check on the courts and see if they are all in the same schedule that they have been. I just don't know that.
>> I think count are less critical as opposed to talk to the judges, talk about the equipment, I mean that's the kind of stuff that can proceed forward. There may be a variation as to how many people are going in and a out of those elevators but that's like the least of this whole long list. Talk to the sheriff, let's look at the stairs. See what we can do.
>> the motion includes your authority to act on any other reasonable low cost -- no cost idea.
>> okay. Sounds good.
>> if it takes a month, so be it.
>> thank you. There was a motion, it was seconded. Any more discussion? Those were intended to be just general directions to follow-up on some of the ideas that we discussed today. Let's see where they take us and see what else we feed to do after that.
>> okay.
>> all right.
>> thank you all very much. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you. If we just said approximately one month from today, that will get it for us.
>> that will do it.
>> that's a not to exceed.


Last Modified: Tuesday, December 17, 2003 6:46 AM