Travis County Commssioners Court
February 24, 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 25
25, review and take appropriate action on budget amendments, transfers, discussion items and non-routine requests for temporary lump-sum salary increases.
>> on the non-routine requests for the award of a temporary lump-sum salary increase, you have valerie's memo explaining h.h.s. Is basically asking for a 10% lump-sum payment to an employee that's taking on some additional duties in relation to the interlocal that the court approved with mhmr.
>> it's a pass-through of money.
>> the 61 -- 61 is provided through that interlocal. The reason we put it -- p.b.o. Put it on, it's non-routine because basically we do projections on the personnel budget, and the department has indicated that they are going to freeze positions, and they do intend to come in within their personnel budget. At this point it's very close and that's the reason we brought it to the court for approval.
>> okay.
>> and I think t-1, I believe the court earlier decided to postpone that for one week. The discussion on d.s. 1 you see on page 22 there was -- i'll deanna explain that.
>> it related to the discussion you had on easy vote and the maintenance agreements. I was out yesterday unfortunately so I'm not sure -- I know the county clerk was also making some phone calls to try to research to see if they could figure out all the additional maintenance agreement costs, but I had no heard from them.
>> that's the item we're asking into executive session.
>> yes.
>> but this budget item is not about that. This is in terms of some equipment they were going to use using $30,000 worth of c.a.r. It turns out east lake are going to do it for us for free and they want to swap out use of those c.a.r. Funds for a slightly less expensive but equally important project [indiscernible] backup stuff. The question is can we get the 5,000 back? Has it already been appropriated?
>> yes, it's already there. That's why we had asked the county clerko see if they would be willing to say, hey, we'll bring -- we'll do a budget adjustment to voluntarily bring the money back. But my understanding on the maintenance agreement was that I still had questions so far as, okay, the -- the connectivity that hart has said they will do for free, is there going to be a future ongoing maintenance cost on that, which I'm not sure about. And then I wasn't sure whether the $1,900 that was list he had in the purchasing backup -- listed in the purchasing backup, the total amount for the new $25,000 purchase they are talking about for the emergency backup module or if there was additional cost related to the i.b.m. Connectivity thing. It was unclear to me and that's what I was trying to get to and so that's why I wanted to make sure that this was linked to the purchasing item because I wasn't exactly sure what all the links were as far as the maintenance agreements were.
>> do you need another week to get all that clear?
>> yes, I think --
>> I think there are more than one issue here.
>> [inaudible].
>> yeah, and that's part of the problem.
>> I move approval of the first item in the amount of 61-61 and the motion is basically to have the item back on next week. Any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
judge, may ask you to revisit item number 25 on your agenda because it is related to this item 9-a. I had $30,000 that I planned to use for an up grade for the e-z vote system.
>> I don't know that we can revisit that. Unfortunately we indicated we would take up the second two items next week.
>> we did?
>> yeah, we passed one. There was some clarification needed. If somebody from the county attorney's office came down here --
>> i'll wait.
>> my concern was we indicated to the world that we would discuss number 2 and 3 of this item. If we can get it back in legally, that's fine, just hold right there.
>> all right.
>> and we will come back to 25.
tom, we did have one question. We called up this morning item number 25, specifically the part about a couple of transfers. There were three, like, subitems much we moved on one and indicated we would reset the second to 2 and 3 to next week. And the question is not with standing that representation, are we able to call that back now?
>> yes, I think legally you can reconsider. Legally you can, it's just a matter of fairness to anybody that was watching. But legally you can.
>> okay. We were told that various items -- various aspects need to be clarified. Have they been clarified?
>> do we need an actual motion to reconsider?
>> yes.
>> I would move we reconsider item 25.
>> second.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you, judge and Commissioners court. Yes, on your list it's vs-1. Now, what number -- what item 25 does is pay for 9-a. And I had originally placed in my budget a $30,000 line item to have a connection between the new early voting system taken new e-z vote system so when voters are qualified to vote there's a realtime connection so you can tell immediately whether this is their first time to vote, exactly who they are, all of that. And there is a subsequent component to that. What happened was that hart stepped in and basically did that connection for us for free. And I don't want to overstate, but it's a security issue. You don't want to have a big gap between the time when you identify that a voter has voted and the time when the system knows that the voter has voted. That's a oubgs one. What I would like to do is now that I got that first part of it done, what I would like to do is finish and use $25,000 of the initial $30,000 for a part that takes care of an emergency module. I have had a little more frequency of down time in the connection between e-z vote and the voter registration database or that the polling place and the e-z vote system than I anticipated. What that means is that we have to go to an emergency module. We have an emergency module, we have a backup, but they are two completely different systems and the judges have to be trained in two completely different ways on these systems and you have to shut down one, open up the other. And what happens is that anybody who votes during that emergency situation where we don't have realtime connection with the voter registration database ends up getting data entered later on. We don't make that information well known, but that is exactly what happens. What I would like to do is to take this 25,000 of the 30 and spend it to finish that module so that I end up having a seamless emergency backup system with the connection, with e-z vote so if I lose the connection, what happens is is that I have an emergency backup that's seamless, it looks exactly the aim, it does not -- same, it does not require the election judge to go to the different module, there's no different training program, and better yet, once the connection is restored, then it's instantaneous update for anybody who was voting within that time period. It saves us manual data entry later on at night. It greatly compresses that security time freezing rain and it's a whole lot ease year everybody else. Since I ended up getting the first part for free, I was hoping you would let me spend 25 of the 30 to let me get the rest of this. That's what the-a is all about.
>> in terms of us trying to get -- since the money has already gotten into your budget, is there a way that you would voluntarily send the other $5,000, it would not be -- that would not be necessary back to the c.a.r. Reserve?
>> be happy to. No problem.
>> move approval.
>> in fact, the exact amount is -- I think it's 24,690, something like that. So you can have 5,000 and change.
>> I would move approval of this item with the taking up the offer of the getting the money back and putting it back into c.a.r. That is left over.
>> I think the only thing that I understand about this whole thing is it's going to be another $5,000 going back into the c.a.r. Program. [laughter]
>> we had a -- we had a project -- [multiple voices]
>> it does get complicated.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you very much.
>> what does that do for t-1?
>> t-1 was something separate and there's an issue with the auditor and activity codes and that's something different.
>> so you want to be back on next week?
>> yes, sir.
>> thank you.
>> judge, after consulting with john hille, we have a suggestion for you. Out of abundance of caution, you might want to list this on the agenda next week. When somebody was watching and when you said you would postpone it, they left their television set and went and did something else thinking they could come back and talk to you about this, you could have it on the agenda, if no one shows up --
>> stick it on consent.
>> I thought there was advice given over to last 15 years, we'll do just that.
Last Modified: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 6:44 AM