Travis County Commssioners Court
February 10, 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 37
37. Consider and take appropriate action on request to ratify county judge's decision on emergency overtime at tax assessor's office for Friday, January 29, through Monday morning, February 2, 2004 and identify funding source. I think I notified the court moments after this was drawn to my attention. What happened basically was we did have a significant amount of money on hand out at the airport facility. And my first idea was why don't we contact our carrier on an emergency basis and get an emergency pickup and notify the bank that we had money on the way. And I was advised by the managers working on this issue that it's -- that it had opinion tried but there was -- it had been tried but there was no way to work it out. I guess my second suggestion was well is the treasurer office a lot safer but it was really approaching five. So everybody pretty much agreed that having security on hand over the weekend to guard this money was the best thing to do. On an emergency basis basically declared an emergency and authorized the overtime and what we need to do if -- is to ratify my decision, I don't know what I would have done if somebody -- [laughter]
>> and identify source of funding. And now I guess identifying that this is not an urgent matter, what we will need to say is where this money will come from the sheriff dispatched folk out there to take care of this.
>> yes, sir.
>> which means so far it's out of your budget.
>> yes, sir.
>> and but -- but the other departments are affected, facilities, tax assessor collector, to some extent the county clerk, because I think the county clerk had money there, too, right.
>> yes.
>> the good news is that all of these departments since we learned during the career have money in their budgets to cover this [laughter]
>> I think that's an issue for a civil debate. [laughter]
>> or not so civil debate.
>> debate. Our recommendation, judge, I sent an e-mail last night was to take it from allocated reserve. I think everyone was trying to do the right thing. We had a significant amount of money and we thought for the time period that it was there that the $2,000 was clearly worth the investment of keeping security at a maximum level.
>> I think so, too.
>> I will go you one step further. I would move that it does come out of allocated reserves and that we appropriately take care of this issue during budget to appropriately budget it, I would think, add it to base within nelda's budget to handle this each and every year that we have got this situation in terms of money hanging around.
>> second.
>> let's take care of this during budget and fix it and put it in somebody's budget, let's move on for this year.
>> second on allocated reserve.
>> yes. What I do plan to do, though, is -- either in one week or three weeks, is to have an item on the agenda dealing with this security issue of facilities outside the sheriff's office.
>> that's appropriate.
>> that had been sort of land wishing for -- language englishing for -- languishing for quite some time. We might as well have an update on security features at airport. I understand that we are working on those.
>> we do.
>> do you think that the week after the 24th, February 2nd is better than -- March 2nd.
>> March.
>> yes, sir.
>> the 17th.
>> yes, we can have that information for you.
>> this will take care of the immediate need.
>> right now it's like $1,900, let's move on.
>> not very much.
>> any more discussion? I would like to make a statement on this.
>> go right ahead. >.
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> .
>> ... And we didn't send a bill for that. It was just the fact of this overtime weekend status. But during the whole tax collection period, the high days, we had staff out at the airport office due to the volume of money.
>> as part of my motion it includes the ratifying of the judge's decision to authorize the overtime.
>> versus putting it on the screen about how much money are we talking about, it's not like we need to broadcast that for next year's collection. But I'm just blown away that -- I mean, we were rejected by our bank and our courier service that we could not work something out with them hofplt is our bank? And I mean I can't imagine that somebody can't make a phone call and say we need a little bit of help. I don't think this was $35.
>> that's the kind of thing that ought to be worked in and out the depository agreement in terms of that's an issue there and as we do the contract on the armored car, but perhaps ad hoc is not the place we can accomplish best results. It's a legitimate point. That needs to be contractually locked down at the time we do contracts.
>> imagine somebody going to work, somebody has a lot of money, we want it in our bank if it's been here for an hour, we're making money on you making that deposit.
>> occasionally we're not 100% in control of everything.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
Last Modified: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 6:44 PM