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 39
Now we did indicate earlier this morning that we would call up item no. 39 a and b at 11:00. 39. A. Receive and take appropriate action on presentation from worksource, greater Austin area work force; and b. Consider and take appropriate action on request to reduce insurance requirement. Good morning.
>> good morning.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioner, I'm jo ann grisham, chair this year of our local area workforce board. This is shirley clowers and annette who is our program director. And we are coming today with a couple of items. And the first item is just to kind of give you a brief overview and highlights of work source to kind of keep you updated. I think we brought it over to you all yesterday afternoon a book that says work source. This is all the information that you will ever want to know or hope to know about work source. I just want to highlight a couple of things in that. The county judge, judge Biscoe and mayor will wynn is the c.e.o. Really of our organization. Their 28 -- there are 28 boards in the state of Texas, we are one of them. We have 24 board members, they come from the public sector, the private sector, labor, small, large businesses. So we feel like we are pretty well representative of Austin. We receive our funds from twc, about -- we draw down a lot of our match anywhere from 5 to $7 million, we have an operating budget of about $27 million. In your book, the -- kind of the sections that we wanted to highlight for you, one is the -- under the strategic accomplishments, this really tells us what programs that we are operating right now in Austin. And the dollar amount that we are using. And this is kind of what we are going for. We have 101 performances that we have to meet from t.w.c. Which will fall within all of these programs. We mainly look at our career centers, child care, training and our youth program. The next tab, as you see, is our grants and career centers. And this is grants from 2,000 to 2003 and we -- we have had funded through us about 6 point million dollars in grant money that has been used for Travis County, which we feel has really included a lot of great programs that will get trained, get employed and get on the right track for career advancement. Then the next one gives you an idea about our child care. Child care in Austin is probably half of our budget. We are serving approximately 9,000 kids, probably have about that men on a waiting list. Child care is not going anywhere, it's just decreasing. We have increased that budget and matched funds through federal matching and pulled down another ditional $4 billion. So we are consistently looking at that. Then the rest of your tabs in your book it looks at the youth programs that we have going on, our goals and objectives for our work source, of course our budget which details where you say that we are going and what training. Then the last section under other gives you kind of a detail of what we are looking at for layoffs in Austin, who is laying off and the time that's we are doing that. For our four career centers, we see in and out about 20,000 people a month. That's a duplicate count at some point, but it's people coming to our centers who are looking for work, working on their resume. Resume, looking for training, so our centers are consistently busy all the time. As I said we are accountable for performance measures and also for all of the grants and program that's we run. Programs that we run. Shirley, if you all would give them -- they have it. We just handed out celebrating our community collaborations that we just passed to y'all. This is a partial list of some of the partner that's we work with. Most of these on this list are ones that you fund to Travis County. We are involved with every one of those. We know that work source cannot do this alone, that's why we have so many partners in community for each ram that we do. So you can -- each program that we do. You can see that we are working with you to do all of that. Shirley is going to tell you about some of our current community issues that we are currently working on.
>> thank you. Again, thank you for the turcht for us to present to you today. I am the executive director for work choice. You received community initiatives. We wanted to highlight a few of the programs that we are partnering on through grants. As well as some upcoming initiatives. One of the major ones that you will be -- that we hope that you will be involved in is the grand opening of the new workforce facility located on airport boulevard in particular. We did a study about a year and a half ago of our career centers. They were developed in the late 1990's. When there was a lot of other activity going on as far as developing our board at the same time. What our board has done, due to that study, which said that we had the highest capacity per square foot in the nation, in the north career center, and that we could not serve the needs of our clients and -- in a way that was appropriate was go ahead and look at, see how we can design a new facility that would be cost effective, meet both the needs of the business community as they look to expand and hire individuals in our community, but also meet the needs of the clients in our -- and our various partners. In our new facility there will be a youth career center where they can seek jobs as well as the children's waiting room, computer training labs and meeting rooms for both the clients and the employers that we work with. In the back of your packet, there's an economic development site tool. An r.f.p. Is going out from t.w.c., A new initiative through the board. Information will be available in our community as well as every other community in Texas as we look at economic development and try to both retain and recruit organizations and companies to Texas and Austin. That information in particular will be channeled through your local board. It's quite intensive. And there's a lot of information covered. So we do encourage you to take a look at that. The next group of new initiatives you will see are -- are a variety of programs that we are funding, several of those -- your organizations are also involved in such as illiteracy hotline and some of the training, training that you also provide through c a.t.f. Or the cttc center. On the back you will see some ongoing initiatives. We have -- we have helped lead the charge as far as the asset building coalition, the earned income tax credit, free tax preparation from this time of year. One of our staffs co-chairs that with a variety of community partners. About $6 million in grants over the last several years. 1 point 3 million in training, this year we have approximately $2 million of a $6 million career center budget that is targeted towards both training and support services for clients that are seeking employment and are income eligible. Some much those continue through this year, everything from nursing training to electrical training as far as working with the local unions. As well as the coalition. I would welcome any questions that you might have at this time. Anything else that you would like to add?
>> I know that it's pretty much all inclusive, but excuse me, we want everyone to know that our centers are actually making our citizens of Travis County, you know, trying to get them on the employment track. I think some of the program that's we are doing is offering such things.
>> [indiscernible]
>> you know the old solo serve building, part of that building.
>> oh, part of the new strip down the block there with our new --
>> absolutely. We looked at that site.
>> and vice versa.
>> right. [laughter]
>> just an fyi, updating your information, I have had this from the past. The Pflugerville site has slightly changed because we have moved our community center. No longer on windemere drive, we are moving into our new community center in process and we were over there just the other day, saw somebody in the workforce area. That's on foot hill farms road.
>> we will get the new address, thanks.
>> thanks. Any questions?
>> I'm sorry, sir.
>> how many centers do you have?
>> we have currently four centers, one of them, three full centers, one at the Austin community college on eastview campus, one down south off ben white, north at rundberg, currently a reemployment center opened three years ago during the beginning of the layoffs we never intended for that one to stay open as long as it has. It will be consolidated into the new center, so-- so both the child care contractors as well as the career center contractor will be in the new center, in addition our youth contractors will have a location there as well. The one complaint that I heard was for a resident to take advantage of the centers, she must be computer literal, really educated, I guess it kind of flows from the notion that you really have to be self motivated in order to -- to find a job on your own. But basic assistance what's in place?
>> we do fund the c a.t.f. For their basic skills training as far as about $80,000 a year into that program, have for a number of years. So individuals that do come into the centers are encouraged to utilize that free training that you will also fund. So that they can obtain the basic skills that can utilize in the centers. Unfortunately the way the system is designed there is not enough funding to be able to -- it is a self-serve type of situation out in the front. But we do reside that additional training. We are also partnering to move some of that training into the new facility, particularly one evening a week so they don't have to go off-site to get that training, they will be alto get it radio there as well. Any other questions about the presentation?
>> what's the difference. I can see the difference between 2002 statistical layoff [indiscernible] gathered insofar as -- 2003, is it really the difference between 5200 and 18 now? 18 -- 18,000?
>> yes, would it be. It would be. We handle the rapid response, the company is laying off 50 or more or if it's a government agency as we have seen recently, a lot of the state agency, consolidating and laying off, we handle those as well, no matter what the size is. But these would be the ones that we were either involved directly in during those time frames. We did see that first year as significant -- a significant number of layoffs.
>> was the 2002 then the first statistical career that you all owe so he that we kept the numbers?
>> that we kept the numbers.
>> it goes back to I believe 12-14-01.
>> the dates are on the --
>> the last column is the date.
>> okay.
>> so that's [multiple voices]
>> I was just reading the heading for 2003 and then when you go to the second page for 2002, there was about six or seven pages, obviously in 2002 it was a much -- I mean it was a harder year than 2003. So the difference between the 18,000, the 5,000.
>> it's significant.
>> any other questions or comments regarding a? Can you be month -- a little more specific recently in response to a careful reading of a contract that the state of Texas wanted Travis County to sign carks , it came to our attention that Travis County may well be liable for physical shortcomings at work source. And as a result of that, we increased our liability insurance requirements from, was it one million that we were at?
>> two million.
>> from two million to five million. And b basically is work source's request that we reconsider the increase for -- for three reasons that we right to highlight -- that we try to highlight and do you all want to state them or should I just state them?
>> go ahead, sir.
>> one is that they think that it's basically overkill based on the risk. That there has never been such a claim I guess made against work source or any county.
>> we have never had a disallowed cost or a claim against Travis County or the board. In addition, t.w.c. Has found through the billions of dollars that they have allocated in Texas since late 19 -- about 1996, less than 1/10th of 1% has been such a cost. So that there wasn't a need for this type of coverage.
>> and 1/10th of 1% of your budget would be much, much smaller than --
>> several million.
>> two million, right. The other thing it is difficult to get 5 million of insurance coverage and is costly, it would cost more than $25,000 if they were to -- forced to get that. The other thing is that they did survey some of the other regions and many of the regions I guess they use -- they have to basically agree to the same language that the state wants us to agree to. The larger ones are the ones that I put the asterisks by from the county judge, not work source, they were not bold enough to do that. [laughter] but north central, you know, the budget at capital area work source is almost $23 million, and at the north central is about $40 million, insurance requirement there is 2 million. Don't have the dallas area's insurance. Do you know that now? And the dallas area?
>> no. But we do know upper rio grande, $41 million, there is a -- theirs is 3 million, alamo, almost 59 million, just one million of insurance coverage. Coastal bend, close to us, a little bit more than $24 million, they have a $1 million requirement. Lower rio grande we don't have that one, they are larger. It does seem, based on these, that the largest two, northeast is just 10 million. They require $3 million. Upper rio grande is about twice our size for 3 million. To be honest, when we saw that, when the language was called to my attention, it really was sort of shocking. First I thought they were holding the county judge liable. And then -- [laughter] -- I did relax a little bit when I realized they meant Travis County not the county judge. But even at that it was a little bit disturbing, so we may have overreacted I guess is what it seems to me.
>> seems like the answer is not 0, the answer is not five million, what is the number that --
>> yeah.
>> because there are things that -- cameron county, for example, they are pretty close to our size it's a million. I would say go back to two million. If there's some sort of a claim later on on specific issues or problems that came to our attention, then we may want to reconsider. I was hoping the state of Texas would help pay for the liability coverage, but --
>> they are cutting everything.
>> well, they do pay for it, sir. [laughter] it comes out of our funds. We were just concerned that for that additional $3 million in coverage, we were paying 10 -- $10,000 already. For that additional 3 million we are going to have to pay 15,000 more and we are really doing everything that we can to be efficient and control costs and put dollars into training and other programs and services. And so we just felt $15,000 was worth bringing to your attention.
>> okay.
>> so you are already at two million.
>> right.
>> yes. With the understanding that work source will call to our attention any possible problem of a fiscal nature that could result in some claim being filed against Travis County, I move that we return to the $2 million insurance requirement.
>> second.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
>> thank you, sir.
>> keep up the good work.
>> just for information purposes, we will now take it to the city because they have to approve it as well.
>> thank y'all.
>> thank y'all.
>> get with [indiscernible] he can give you our new address.
>> thanks.
>> do you want to send a draft amendment to the contract because I think the insurance requirements --
>> whatever we need to do legally I guess. We may as well work with the city on that also.
>> yeah.
>> let's see if we can.
Last Modified: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 6:44 PM