Travis County Commssioners Court
January 27, 2004
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 16
Now, it may be the the only other item is the elevator.
>> the elevator is in executive session. Elevator people. There they are. Number 16 is to consider and take appropriate action on elevators in the black well-thurmon criminal justice center.
>> yes, sir. And in December we came to the court or the court put an item, I think, you did judge, put an item to discuss the public elevators at the criminal justice center. Specifically, we are talking about four elevators, the charge of the court was to go back and talk to the judges and the elevator maintenance and manufacturers and to collect data on the expediency of the elevator and to come back with recommendations and -- on how to facilitate the -- the transport of individuals to the court floors and we have done that and we have a report for you. Roger el khoury will start. He did -- we did collect date did take on January 5th, 9th, 12th 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, we have met with the judges, judge flowers specifically who was the administrative judge for the criminal courts and the elevator maintenance and mafacturer. So we are here to present the data.
>> thank you, good afternoon, roger el khoury facility management. The report that I have with me, jim bar from facilities management and john carr. I'm going right on with the presentation. Use that mic there so we will be able to hear each and every word.
>> this is again a -- the cjc, just wants to have the orientation, main entrance here. This is the prisoner transport elevator and the elected official elevator and some of their staff and this is right here a service elevator which is maintenance and number one and two are the prisoner transport elevators. Number 3, 4, 5, 6, the public elevator. That's what we are concentrating our presentation on. This dotted line right here, the cuing area. People start coming to the elevator, we have an attendant right there, they -- they direct people towards the elevators starting from here. Overflow starts from here. Okay. As you can see on January 5th and January 9th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, we collected all of the data. We collected the data per elevator, number 3, on that -- that is about like 436, elevator number 4, 259 and so forth, so on. The total number of people per elevator per day. Per two hours, very important, per two hours in 8:00 until -- from 8:00 until 10:00. Also data broken down time integrals of 15 minutes. All the way to 10:00. So we collected the very valuable data here. We plotted this data to show you our graphical chart on Monday, this is a total on Monday, for elevator number 3, for elevator number 3 also the total on Friday, and another Monday and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and another Friday. Within -- we did this for each elevator. As you can see, elevator number 5 is the main used elevator because the cjc, floor number 4, 5, 6 county court, heavily usage for the district court which is on number 6 -- 7, 8, and 9. We have one this district court elevator on the -- on the fifth. Again, we would like also to present to you that elevator number 3, as you can see right here. Is an elevator that goes to all floor. Elevator number 5 also to all floor. Elevator number 5 goes to floor number 4, 5, 6. Elevator number 6 goes to 7, 8, 9. These two elevators are what we call express elevator. As you can see from the data collected right there, express elevators do help, but not like everybody is expected going to solve the problem of the elevator. We as you can see the data right here, the data right here are always the same. Even though we have here express elevator going to the district judges floor. One of our recommendations based on our -- based on the data collection and also from the maintenance perspective is we have a [indiscernible] 4 elevator for the cjc and the public. We are afraid if one of those elevators have down time, then we have a problem, you know, on like for instance if number 6 broke then also we have only number 3 and number 4 can go to floor number 7, 8, 9. So what we would like to do, one of our recommendations, we will talk about that the presentation is to do away with the express elevator. And have all of this elevator can go to any floor, they have to go -- yeah, to any floor from 4 through -- to 9. Now, there's very -- one very important factor in all of that is -- is the attendant at the elevator. That's also intended to start quing or streamlining the folks coming to the elevator. Also wanted to load the elevator also. Not only direct them to which elevator. By making also the express elevator of course they can go to any elevators at the first floor and we want that on -- each elevator capacity about 20 people. We don't want the elevator to go up. The other floor was only like three or four or five people. We want to pack the elevators and send them up to the floor. That the attendant will have this as a main task from those two hours. Now, based on -- let me show you right here the chart right here. You can tell a little story here. The story on this bottom chart here, how many people we have on Monday, within those two hours. We have 1,683. 1,755 on Friday. As you can see, this is another Friday, 17,777. Another Monday, I'm sorry. Here is a Tuesday. 1,777. Here is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, another Friday. The average on -- on Monday and Friday is about -- about 1,650, on the average on Tuesday, from Thursday, is about like 1,435. What we are saying here is we have lots of people in the lobby within those two hours. And I want to show you also this one right here. It can tell also the story of what time we have so many -- the people are really concentrating in the lobby. As you can see from 8:00 to 5:00, this is cumulative data on 7 days from 8:00 to 8:15. Shows about like 500. If you go all the way from here to 9:00, it's about 1,877. So the majority of folks arrive to the court between 8:30 and leaving like 9:45. See this is the area right here, this is concentration we try to tackle that really those elevators have so many people, forcing them back to -- they are doing their job. We talked to the manufacturer for those elevators and the regional manager and technician came and we talk about the issues of the elevator, all of this down time we have. We shared with them all of the data we collected for the last 32 months. They give us a recommendation. John would like to expand on that for you.
>> yes. The county pointed out to us that the majority of trouble calls with elevators, 75% of calls are related to the door opening and closing devices on the cabs. So one of the recommendations was that we want to go completely through our doors, make sure that everything is up to spec, working properly. We will have our elevator maintenance contractor tejas see if they can eliminate any problems there. They also mentioned house keeping around the door as critical. You can't have paper clips, gravel, anything that de-- down in the tracks underneath the doors or it will cause a problem. We have directed our custodial staff to make sure they vacuum out those door sills every night. The other recommendation that they had was that we could pick up some time on our service between floors if we reduced the amount of time that the doors are opened. They cycle right now, standard time is 4.2 second to open and close. They are representing we go down to 3.5 seconds per door opening cycle. We will do that with your approval except on the lobby floor where there's a different problem where you need them to stay open longer. On the upper floors reduce to 3 money 5 second per cycle. I believe that you have covered everything else.
>> one more thing about the recommendation. They did some assessment to the floor, to the elevator speed. And the elevator speed, the industry standard is to go about 300-foot per minute. That assessment on each elevator for the public elevators, ranging between 300 and -- 343 to 360, so those elevators are within the recommended operational standard that the -- the industry standard I should say. So we are -- and speed is not the issue for those elevators. They are not breaking down becaey are slow or fast. [papers shuffling - audio interference] they are just right. This based on the [indiscernible] manufacturer. Now, -- one more thing about the time delay. This chart right here at the bottom, what we did is on the lobby as we had [indiscernible] [papers shuffling - audio interference] we pick up from random, we did the random collection of data, we pick up the person he or three, let's say 88:31, we time that person from the queing lane until you get from the elevator into the elevator. As you can see from -- from the morning, when we don't have many people, it's only about like 10 to 20 second and up to 40 second people can go from the lane into the elevator. That's very normal. The industry standard for private elevator or nationwide elevator waiting time is only 15 to 20 seconds. So really we are within that. When it goes to between like 8:50 to -- to 9:15 when we have so many people in there, then the queing lane, we recorded that the -- that it takes a two minute from a person when they enter the queing lane until they get into the elevator. That is not bad, you know, when we have so many people in the elevator, you know, waiting to go on the elevator for those particular time. So this is just to validate our data, we have the -- about the waiting time on our elevators.
>> a whole lot better at memorial stadium as soon as the game is over, that can take forever to get an elevator.
>> we -- we also have a recommendation that we would like to share with you about the stairs. We met with the sheriff, also the sheriff's folks and lieutenant, we met with them --
>> can I ask you one quick question before you go to that?
>> sure.
>> so in terms of queing lines, there's only one of them?
>> yeah.
>> if there are four elevators why wouldn't we have two, one on one side, one on the other side, would that make a difference?
>> well, john, does it make a difference on that?
>> we only have one person, though, to queue.
>> your line would be shorter that way. I think that it's psychological. I think if you stand there a minute and a half, I think your thinking is that it's longer than that because you are at the back of the line working your way toward the front. There are two lines, I assume that you would be half the distance there. See what I'm saying? You arrive at the same time instead of being so far back, you would be at the distance. Now, part of what you recommend it's has we get -- is that we get some additional warm bodies to help direct people to elevators and also hold the elevators when they are close to full, right?
>> one of our recommendations, yes.
>> that caught occurred to me. Let's think about it.
>> yeah.
>> may I interrupt just a moment. I had -- I had an opportunity to talk with sheriff frasier prior to coming over here. And she would like any discussions about the stairwells to be done in executive session for security purposes.
>> okay.
>> thank you. Your discussion involves only one set of stairs?
>> yes, sir.
>> that's the set that you are talking about.
>> pardon me, sir.
>> that's the set that you are talking about, too, when you walk in there to the left?
>> yes.
>> I can present that in the -- in the.
>> why don't we go in there after this item anyway.
>> okay.
>> before we leave the elevators, can I ask the proverbial horse is already let out of the barn question. Were we told at the time that this building was being presented to us and we are -- we are approving the program, that -- that four elevators was sufficient to handle the crowds that would be coming in. Were we told that -- that we would have queu ups why we were told that we would have these kinds of issue that's we are now dealing with right now. When you look at it now you are going only elected officials, that elevator is just fine. We have to have one -- we have lots of elevators, but for the public there are only four. And -- and now you look back and going a nine story building we think that four elevators is sufficient? It doesn't make any sense, I would like not today, for somebody come kinds of go back and look at what we were being told related to the sufficiency of four elevators for this building and kind of getting to where jamie is going next on the stairs, I specifically remember asking about whether people were going to be able to use the stairs to move between floors. Think that it's not realistic to think that somebody is going to take the stairs from the lobby up to the 9th floor. But certainly moving between and I do remember being told, yes, the stairs could be used but obviously from the way the building was constructed, not when the stairwell leads outdoors. So -- if we can kind of go back and do a little bit of -- of history work in terms of what we were told about the sufficiency of what we built.
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> .
>> we have a sign on the front lobby for the court directories.
>> I'm sorry?
>> in the front lobbies.
>> on the first floor, not on the elevators on every floor so a lot of people get up to one floor and it's on another floor.
>> that's correct. Now we'll put it on every floor so they know. If they are on the 7th floor, they want to go to 6th, they don't have to use the elevator. So I would like to talk about the stairs in executive session. We have a recommendation to you all. I believe this is our recommendation on that. I don't think the -- in summary, the elevators, I don't think it's a big problem as we can see from the [indiscernible]. One of our recommendations is number one is a priority. As you can see from the debt we have collected and we are trying to work with the district and the county criminal judges and the clerk administration on spread out the elevator loading. What I mean is, I believe she is here so they can tell you more about the schedule. The presiding judge and deborah and my staff, we presented the numbers -- would you put the numbers back? Like about 1700 people that come in one day through those doors. And we thought about first staggering them Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but they have another 1300, 1400 on those days right here. As you can see on Monday that 1777 for two hours. Our recommendation to the court but we have to work with the judges and deborah hale that what if some of the court can do the docket schedule in the afternoon. So this can drop the numbers about 20%. Again, this is, I believe, a call from the judges, you know, that that schedule can work. But from the elevator perspective from the operation of the he will sraeurlt, that will -- elevator, that will bring the load down so the elevator will not break that often. Because the users of those elevators, heavy users at one time, that's what makes the elevators sometimes break.
>> I just wanted to kind of update on the court on some of the efforts that the judges have made to stagger the dockets over the past few years. When I started two and a half years ago, we didn't have any of the express elevators and the lines were much, much worse than they are right now. So as a result the courts did implement some staggering of the dockets, and I think it kind of surprised some people that we have a lot of different hedules. There were so many I had to actually make notes. But the county court starts se dockets at 8:30. The districts start at 9:00. At 9:30 there's pretrials. 10:00 a lot of the sror dire is held, where you summons the jurors. In a district case that involves summoning 50 jurors to come in. In a county court at law case that's 20. During a jury week, that's going to be the day you are going to have the largest number of people coming in is when you are doing the voir dire. Each floor has two courts out and one court will have a jury week that week in order to kind of facilitate with the crowds downstairs. The other court will have non-jury week. That's when they do all the other matters that go before the court. They will be doing probation hearings, pretrial hearings, any other kind of matter that might go before the court. And those tend to be -- the non-jury tend to be the ones that have the largest volume of the public. The district courts' jury start at different times. The voir dires. Four of them start them in the afternoon out of the six. Two of them start them in the morning. Two of the district courts have already moved their non-jury dockets to the afternoons in order to kind of accommodate the crowds. In the county courts, it's a little more confusing. In the district courts, a jury is going to last about a week because it's going to be a longer trial. In the county courts they are going to last generally a couple of days. So half of them start their juries on Mondays and Wednesdays and half of them start them on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Of those, half of them do them in the afternoons and half of them do them in the mornings. And as you know, like the jail reduction docket which we used to have every morning, we now have moved to the afternoon. So -- and then both district and county courts do pretrials and other lengthy hearings in the afternoons. So really there have been a lot of efforts on the courts' part to stagger the dockets. In looking at roger's numbers, and I realize there are a lot in the morning, you have to remember the courts have about 15,000 cases pending before them. So you are probably looking at on any given day 8% to 10% of the docket has to show up. And with juries, once a jury has been picked, you really can't ask jurors to come at 1:00 and stay until 8:00 or 9:00 at night. The jury has to get started in the morning and finish by 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. So I personally think the courts have done a lot. I think that the judges are very committed to try to work out this problem with the elevators. And, you know, they probably would be willing to look at some more, but they've done quite a bit already I think to do the staggering.
>> okay. That's our recommendation, and we would like to continue that in executive session whenever you are ready.
>> the recommendation -- what's the recommendation on additional help at the elevators, say, from 8:30 until 10:30 in the morning?
>> as you know, the c.j.c., It's a multi-department use. You have the tax office, you have the sheriff and the i.t.s., Pretrial service, district attorney, [indiscernible] has to manage that building. And we have in the budget early on we had two f.t.e.s was assigned to the court administration to have the information desk at the lobby manned at all times from 8:00 to 5:00. We're thinking one of those folks, if they can be trusted with the facility management, if they can take care of the elevators, [indiscernible] also loading the elevators if we have to change the afternoon or morning or whatever. That person is there at all times and we think that, you know, some people -- to help us out with the signage, regardless how many signs you put on the first floor, people has to see a warm body sitting there to ask for information. And that person if it's sitting there can help people with that information, let's say the court administration or the district clerk, that person is there at all times. What we're saying here is we can work with the county -- with the -- with the court administration about they do want to take over the loading and the attending -- I'm talking the attendants, loading the elevator, that's fine with us, we back off on that task. But if it's going to be the responsibility of facilities management, I would like to have the resources and the control to do it so I can report to you on that if there's any problem or anything. So that's our recommendation to have one of those two transfer the facilities management if you choose to do so.
>> what about an idea of an r.f.p., Trying to get one or two volunteers to come over 8:30, 10:30 in the morning? Seems to me we would have to stress that person would have to be able to stand and mix with the public, physically fit to that extent. Try that on a pilot basis for four or five weeks and see how that works out.
>> we'll be glad to think anything, judge, that's a good idea to have the volunteer to do the work done at the c.j.c., But I just want to make sure that my staff, they still have to work with that volunteer to keep them going, first, train them on what needs to be done. Also, I'm not -- the liability is very important on this. That being if we have a volunteer, we need to make sure that volunteer is there at all times and for those two hours. And take care of the task eye signed to the volunteer. That's the only thing. Otherwise we can work with the volunteer any time, any day.
>> how many people do you have on your staff?
>> right now we have two folks. We have -- we take the maintenance from the c.j.c., And also we have a building attendant. Most of the time we have them on Monday and Friday. The building attendant from 8:00 to 10:00. They will go to c.j.c., We pull them from other jobs here, they go to c.j.c. And man the cueing and the elevator.
>> roger, the data is, you really have one. When you build a maintenance -- yes, you have one person. When you pull a maintenance tech, one, you are paying more for that maintenance tech and he's not attending to the real job that he needs to address which are the maintenance.
>> [indiscernible].
>> oh, we've been doing this for two years, I believe.
>> stealing people away won't hurt them. You have two people there, we get us two, three or four volunteers for these two hours, one for each elevator. Got two supervisors. And if you need to ease the maintenance tech out, then you leave [indiscernible]. I'm just saying we ought to give it a shot. All of a sudden instead of two people, you've really got six there for the two hours that matter. And it all kind of turns on whether rsvp can get people over there. The way they generate hours, they can come up with 10 hours, I'm thinking. The one requirement I'm thinking about you kind of have to deal with a variety of people standing on your feet moving about for a couple hours.
>> kind of like a wal-mart greeter.
>> absolutely.
>> I'm sorry use. I'm really serious. These are folks that know the building, and there are lots of retired folks anyway that come over to our courts on a daily basis because it's very interesting stuff. More interesting than what's on t.v. You can go see live stuff. You don't have to watch "law and order."
>> there may be a mid-ground also. In talking to deborah hale before the meeting, I think there may be some willingness from court administration to be able to utilize one of the individuals that they have been using that was assigned to the information desk for about two hours at the information desk every morning and perhaps help with the cueing. The issue about two people, that's the first time that I heard that we pulled a maintenance mechanic. I believe that there is one person -- I would be really very concerned about continuing to use a maintenance mechanic because we have a lot of use for the maintenance person and the price is so much higher. I believe we can try the volunteers. I talked to steven earlier and he was not very encouraging about the volunteers, but he said that they would try to get someone. But when I did talk to deborah, I think that she was willing to try one of her people during that time period and help them with loading and cueing the elevators.
>> but in doing that, we need to make sure that does not mean that there is nobody in the donut because there are people that just come up with a real question related to where am I supposed to be, et cetera. And we can't have the information booth unattended simply to try and get elevators loaded. That creates a different kind of a gap.
>> and that was one of the things I think we talked about briefly right before this is that you really need to have somebody in that booth because at times you do have people who forget their paperwork or they are not sure, should they have been here yesterday or today, and there is a little bit of research that has to be done with the computer to look them up. And at the same time -- and i'ming about really during the busy periods. Then you need a separate person who is kind of cueing the line. So I don't on a real busy day, I don't see how one person -- I don't see how the person behind the donut would be able to come out and do that without you losing some of what you need right there. Which is the information.
>> do we have the person to man the donut today?
>> 8:15 to 11:00 is where we've been putting them.
>> you are saying we need that person there.
>> I think so.
>> all day or just during the peak times? -
>> if that donut is being attended eight hours, that serves ts function. Let me go back and just correct a statement I said. It's really alicia is correct, we have really only one person that's building maintenance. Sometimes we have pulled maintenance if we have heavy things or if one of our building attendants is sick or we pull maintenance. That's a correction.
>> [indiscernible].
>> always one full time for two years I'm using building attendants from Monday and Friday. But sometimes I use a maintenance -- when the building attendant is not there or that building attendant needs extra help. That's all.
>> before we leave the donut, though, we need to make sure when the deal was cut related to the donut person, it was thought that we would give those one or two people to criminal courts administration and they would go elsewhere to go work. Somebody needs to be at the donut. That doesn't mean that they can't have a laptop or some kind of computer, but it was never about that the donut would be unattended. So the court -- related to the person in the donut is related to them physically being there even if there are other things they do during the less busy times of the day when the crowds aren't as big. It really needs to be attended.
>> we are very willing to compromise with that and that's not a problem to put someone out there.
>> great.
>> so my wife doesn't ask me if she starts watching this, what's the donut?
>> it's the information booth.
>> is that where you get a donut or somebody signing in, what are they talking about donuts.
>> it's shaped like a donut, but it's the information booth. It's round with a hole in it.
>> it's like the a.p.d. You go into the donut.
>> this right here. This is the information desk.
>> in the year and a half, I never knew that was a donut. I'm glad to know where the donut is.
>> anything else in open court? Eye guess that's it from us.
>> could I ask just one question point blank. Are these elevators ample elevators -- are these elevators -- would the defense bar tell us you went out there and you went out there and you bought the wrong elevators? Is that one question that can be answered? Should we lead the whole question about you don't have adequate elevators? Is that something that you can tell me, no, you do not have inadequate elevators. What we have is we don't have enough elevators to take on the number of people that we have. Which is correct?
>> we have -- jim barr. We have adequate elevators for that building. They were the correct elevator for the building when it was designed. Their speed is correct. They are 350 feet per minute. We could have gone with 500-foot per minute elevators, but it wasn't necessary. It's a relatively short building. The delay in that time difference from the elevator going from the bottom to the top whether it's 350 or 500 feet per minute is a pretty negligible amount of time. Those are high-quality elevators. The situation that we're in is that for a relatively short period of time during each day, we put a whole lot of people in front of them. If we could have gone with six elevators. I recall personally that our design consultants advised that four was an adequate number for that building. That was discussed. We'll try to find the paperwork for that. But they are not used elevators. That rumor has been floating around. I don't know where you would buy used elevators for a building like that.
>> well, is that design the same guy that did the stairwells so that it comes outside? Is that the same guy we're talking about.
>> that's why we kind of need to go back on some of this history.
>> that's correct.
>> I would like to be able to just say, you know what, we don't have an adequate elevators. Hindsight is always 20-20. We would like to have six. If we knew what they were going to be dealt with in a very short period of time, six elevators were probably -- would probably alleviate the problem. But given that we are not going to do that, then I would like to give these guys because when what's his name came out here last week, the defense bar guy, it was pretty obvious that they were very unhappy with it, and i've already had a couple of the people running for sheriff that said when they get into these forums, one of the major questions they ask before anything ever starts is what can do you about the elevators at the c.j.c. Building. So it obviously is a real point of irritation for a lot of -- not to mention just our basic citizenry that has to come down, they don't even like coming down anyway and when you put them in this mess, it's a problem it's like a rush hour thing. Mow spabg a joy when university of Texas is not in session. But if you want to get on mopac at 8:00 in the morning, you are going to have to wait longer until you wait until 9:00 or 9:30.
>> I think that answers the question. We don't have inadequate elevators. We just have too many folks that that short a period of time for those elevators need to handle. So we need to go to b, which is the best thing that we can slot into b to alleviate the problem during that short time period.
>> and also, Commissioner, I believe there are some definite things that we can do to be proactive to make sure that these elevators function as well as they can possibly function. As john mentioned, the door operation is a critical thing. We're going to have our elevator service company go over the elevators to really check the door operation. So I think there's some things we can do to do our best to make sure they function as well as they can.
>> I like the judges suggestion about the double cue ups. They are loading both sides. It moves faster than a single line.
>> the more we can do to psychologically make this a nicer ride, the better we'll be handling it.
>> this is agenda item number 16 which we will take up in executive session under the security exception to the open meetings act. And a sheriff's representative will be in there also.
>> yes, sir.
we have returned from executive session. Where we discussed the following items. We gang with number 16 involving -- we began with number 16 involving elevators in the blackwell thurmon criminal justice center. We heard a voter of recommendation -- a variety of recommendations, I'm not sure what we need to act on today. Is that clear?
>> yes, sir. We do have a -- an idea of recommendations and I believe that they are listed in your -- in your backup. The first is to work with the district and county criminal judges and court administration on the schedule modifications, I think we are already doing that. You don't need to act on that. We talked about attendance and I believe the court's direction was to go ahead and try the volunteers for a -- for a varied of and then -- for a period of time and then come back to see if that works out.
>> okay. Any objection to that? Let's get it done.
>> okay.
>> you need to tell stephen that the Commissioners court -- with that direction pretty much directed that fred lugo of rsvp try to locate these volunteers for us. Obviously if they cannot find them, just let us know. If they can find them, I guess they need to work with roger on he-- on suitable and I guess some sort of training. My guess is three or four or five weeks later, we can determine whether it's working or not. Try something else if it's not.
>> okay. The other recommendation was they open the stairwell for public use between court floors and also from the lobby. Do you have an estimate on that, that facilities management developed $13,560 for that particular work to open it to the first floor. With the court's approval we capitol -- we can -- with the court's approval we can tap the funds that were left in the c. J. C. Bond funds that were left in the c.j.c.
>> is --
>> fund.
>> is somebody surveying lawyers to see if in fact they will use these stairs.
>> well, that's what we have heard, but we can do that if you would like us to. We have talked to mr. -- about surveying lawyers. I think that we have heard that from a couple of them but not done the survey.
>> probably a whole lot easier to use on the way down than up. But I understand that it's a kind of vigorous climb.
>> yep.
>> but if they are using them, I say let's go for it.
>> yeah.
>> part of the Travis County wellness program. [laughter]
>> yeah. I would not invest $13,650 to have nobody using them, though.
>> okay.
>> we talked to a couple of lawyers and one of them is mr. David franks, you know, he stressed the fact that the -- that if we opened the stairs from the lobby up to the court, that it will help, you know, from his perspective.
>> i've had at least 10 tell me that over the last two years. That's not the same of getting kind of -- I can do an informal survey. Either the defense bar or --
>> uh-huh.
>> if -- with the lawyers coming in here every morning, Monday morning everybody that looks like a lawyer, ask them are you a lawyer, if the stairs the openly you use them.
>> we can ask the defense bar to conduct the survey. They have done those things before. When we did the electronic courtroom they worked with their own members.
>> you have a couple of wreeks before you actually start constructing or implementing this anyway, right? I would -- people -- it sounds like a fantastic idea. But if I understand that the walk from the lobby up to the first floor of the courts alone is a challenge.
>> it is a challenge.
>> it could be that we can stretch, you can walk up them or walk down them, but these stairtion are made for walking -- these stairs are made for walking, if we invest this additional $13,500, I'm going to want to see more than two of y'all over there walking [laughter]
>> not allowed to use the elevators anymore. Everybody on the second floor has to walk that's a joke.
>> everybody gets in on the wellness program.
>> [laughter]
>> this will make sense if somebody uses it.
>> I think they will be used, judge. I'm always amazed at how many people --
>> judge -- I'm sorry, go ahead.
>> it does other good things besides that, i'll leave it at that.
>> the c.j.c. Reserve funds are left over from the project.
>> we left $500,000, didn't we have left over?
>> we left it there to try to help with the elevator traffic.
>> I understand that, but I also believe that people will tell you they will do things versus will they really do them. Now, the only way to really find out, I mean, is to try to work with jamie and then -- jamie is in that office, right?
>> he's in charge of the courthouse --
>> the way it exists right now. Would there be any way that we could have a test pilot where we would see if they would walk through there and -- we couldn't do that test if.
>> no.
>> then you are just doing it on [indiscernible] because I will tell you I can see what's going to happen here. People are going well I'm going to wait here another second, another second, because I really don't want to run upour to five flights of stairs.
>> I will tell you, if you go over to the old historic courthouse, you see the attorneys in the stairwells all the time. In fact they are the ones on the stairs and it the general public who will take the elevators.
>> then i'll defer to your expertise and if that's what you have seen happen before, but yeah it gives them another way. If somebody can't get the elevators, then there are the stairwells.
>> if 95% say no I won't use the stairs --
>> yes, sir, we will do the survey before we start construction.
>> okay.
>> our next recommendation number 4 is to fully implement the [indiscernible] elevator's recommendations which would make sure that -- that we -- we do more maintenance on a daily basis really of -- of the do operator sensors and guides and also reduce the door hold open time from 4.2 minutes to 3.5 -- I'm sorry, 4.2 second to 3.5 seconds, and then we would eliminate the express elevator operation and have all four elevators going to all floors. 7.
>> could we also incorporate the judge's suggestion about -- about kind of the six flag staging of having rather than a single path to the elevators, that there would be ways to kind of double up?
>> yes. As long as -- remember the key to that is the attendant and the queuing, yes, we could do that.
>> see if that happens as well.
>> provide additional number 5, recommendation, provide additional signage to include court directories in each of the elevator cabs and at each elevator lobby. Then 6, again, open the stairwell for public use between lobby and court floors and continue to work with the sheriff on security issues to address their concerns.
>> the signage is temporary now anyway, right.
>> it is temporary right now in the process to make it permanent.
>> okay.
>> move approval of all of the recommendations.
>> second.
>> including the changes made in court. Any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. With Commissioner Gomez absent for the rest of the meeting.
Last Modified: TUesday, January 28, 2004 6:44 AM