Travis County Commssioners Court
April 6, 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 23
23. Consider and take appropriate action on the human resources strategic team report and recommendations on managing employee performance and disciplinary action and feedback from departments.
>> good morning, court. Director of human resources. I hope that you have in your backup several items that were provided as backup materials. The original backup on this item from March 2nd, if we could confirm that because I would be working between -- I will be working between both documents. Then the secondary backup of March 30th, each one had the light penciled through for today's court session April 6th. You will remember that -- that human resources department came before you on behalf of the -- of strategic team that you appointed. Several -- well, a month or so ago and what we provided for you at your request was a strategic initiative to somehow put in place efforts to better manage employee performance as well as disciplinary actions here within Travis County. The motion that you have before you today is to receive that strategic team's report and recommendations related to employee performance and disciplinary actions and to take appropriate action. When we were before you several weeks ago, you requested that in addition to the consensus that we had received from all of the members of the strategic team, that you wanted to have all of the departments to provide comments. We did, we heard from approximately four or five departments. As we walk through the recommendations, we will certainly address the recommendations and feedback that they provided. If we could briefly go to -- to the larger document, the one initially submitted on March the 2nd. If we had both departments reported to the Commissioners court as well, as well as elected officials. Those departments that participated were represented with the sheriff's office, transportation and natural resources, health and human services, the county attorney's office as well as of course the human resources department. What we did, we defined the methodology in terms of how we wanted to address the issues that were outline understand the proposal that you approved on October the 14th. And in that methodology we reviewed very extensively the proposal, the concerns that you had regarding the lack of documentation to support personnel actions. We actually divided those issues into three major areas that we pulled from your proposal, one had to do with performance documentation, which of course was the primary issue. The other was your concerns related to policy compliance, policy compliance had to perform its evaluation as well as disciplinary actions. How well are other departments complying, then the third item had to do with training. You were very much concerned about the availability of training for our supervisors, if the strategic team saw way that's we could perhaps improve that and whether or not you as a court should mandate, especially for the departments reporting to you, that managers and supervisors should attend such training. And more than anything, it was an effort that you saw worthy of putting in place more monitoring and enforcement measures so that compliance could be monitored over a period of time. As we move to page 3 again, I will forego the current conditions that the strategic team identified unless you choose to hear it was that we recognized -- merited the recommendations that we are putting before you. We can certainly bounce back and forth. Starting with the first focus area of documentation, our charge from you was to ensure that there was fair, defensible documentation on employee decisions so that we could better document the actions of course, as I indicated before, that affect our employees. The strategic team's recommendation was that you the court, based on what we examined, approve core competencies for supervisory training that reinforced the compliance of personnel policies and employment laws, best practices, and -- in h.r. So that we could be better on target and accountable for the areas that with you had identified. That you had identified. We have in place on page 10 of that original backup core competencies that we have identified for you. The core competence as presented here are laid out in a four day increment of time. We will talk about the time to achieve these competencies a little bit later. But if we could focus on specifically the competencies, this represents a four day training session, the first day would focus on the role of supervisors dealing with communications, assisting them in -- in how to council and coach their employees and -- in performance related matters. We would also discuss handling difficult employees. Pitfall that's managers and supervisors should avoid as well as overall ways of assisting and supporting employees in their efforts to include their performance. Day 2: outlined here is to focus on the performance management of system itself as well as the evaluation tools. We were very concerned at day 2 that we also focus on the progressive disciplinary process, that's a main com poabts of some of the actions and responses that you are getting as we have been challenged to respond to some of these issues at the court session, at the court level, I'm sorry. Also working with them, the managers and supervisors on what is effective documentation, having it reinforced that effective documentation is not just completing the one-time a year annual performance, but it is an effort that goes on throughout the year with strategic check points within the year so that at the end of the year an employee is not surprised by performance review results. The third day focuses on employment law and compliance. This is an area that -- that we as your h.r. Department as well as your h.r. Entities across the county are forever mindful of. These are the issues of -- these are the laws, these are the state and federal legislations that really guide much of the work that we do in h.r. It's really important that we continue to communicate to employees what these laws consist of, what these requirements are as an employer so that we are not in any way caught violating, if you will, any of these measures. These of course, include title vii as well as fsla. The employment process, hiring and selection process, benefits, workers' comp within the third day and the fourth day we would be for example cussing on workplace diversity, harassment, as well as -- focusing on workplace diversity, harassment, violence in the workplace. We -- approve the core competencies as a body of knowledge, baseline information that all managers would need to engage in. We would hope that we would begin and again we'll talk about training a little bit later. But we would hope that we would begin to execute the training against these core competencies in fy '04 and hopefully completing 100% of our managers and supervisors before the end of this calendar year. Yes. Was there a question? I thought that I sensed a question?
>> I guess my question would be are you proposing that hr conduct all of its training for -- for supervisors or do they get the training wherever they can? Other areas.
>> for the core competence would be the basic training provided by h.r.
>> h.r. Would do -- h.r. The county attorney's office, would be involved with us as well as pulling in some outside resources as needed. But in general this is an h.r. Delivered package.
>> so can this be done with the current budget?
>> yes, it can. Within fy '04 it can be, yes. What we have been doing, Commissioner, for the past three months or so is really designing and developing. We have not been spending at a rate within this fiscal year on training because we were pulling this particular package together. So there are resources to get us through the end of this fiscal year.
>> I guess the reason that I asked this -- [inaudible - no mic] I do know that tak also provides some of the training of the core competencies and -- because i've attended those.
>> uh-huh.
>> when i've just been unable to meet the -- the h.r. Schedule. But I do know that I need to fog that training, but i've been able to get it at tac as well.
>> we will certainly explore tac, not only for facility purposes but also their training resources. I don't have in front of me just this minute, but we have already scheduled both two day and four day training sessions against these competencies and feel that we can probably with existing resources do that as well as engage others as needed.
>> because I know tac and especially tac because they do a lot of training, they are able to do those things that all counties would need. I guess some of those are core competencies and so they provide that training. They have some of our county attorney staff, as a matter of fact, giving that training and it's very good training. Okay.
>> the comments that I saw raised the question about the -- about the need for four days. What's our response to that?
>> the response to that is, we appreciated that feedback very much. Because what we -- back up. That we recognize that managers and supervisors are at different levels in terms of their proficiency and competencies in managing. We would offer a four-day session for those who need more and two day session for those who perhaps would -- would hold the more experienced or the more tenured managers and supervisors, so the core competency that's we laid out here -- competencies that we laid out here would be extracted for the two-day session and of course the four-day session for those who need more.
>> how do we determine which ones need more.
>> typically training needs are identified by the supervisors or individuals as part of of the development plan. Very often that's done based on the needs that are recognized by the managers. It could be dictated by those who have had more challenges, if you will, either completing performance evaluations or have had multiple grievances filed. But there would be something within that supervisors experiences within the county that would dictate a need for -- for the four-day or the two-day training and elements of that.
>> so we would defer to the manager's judgment on one hand? Secondly, we would -- we would -- if we think the managers had -- had I guess exceptional problems, we would I investigation remind the manager -- I guess remind the manager of that.
>> that's --
>> four days.
>> that's not uncommon even in the training that h.r. Delivers, if we've had a manager whose employees or supervisor has been consistently calling us for e.r. Consultations, for how to deliver performance evaluation, for whatever reasons, if that person does not enroll in training, we will often call the manager and say, "based on our experiences, jane doe, john doe, needs to come into the training that we are offering." What we are proposing here is some level of accountability, if you will. Personnel resources, our big ticket item for any employer and a part of what this performance management system puts in place is a structured way to not only better manage that, but of course to yield greater productivity on a management level as well as at the employee level. Four days, are you talking 8 hours a day.
>> typically it turns out about 6 to 7 and a half hours, yes?
>> I'm making sure because we've all had experiences in training in terms of where they get our 16 hours in over four days and it's way too spread out. Then there are things that cuc does that's very packed and it's a very good use of our time to be able to maximize because I can see somewhere someone would say four days, depending on -- depending on when that four days is, if it's -- when p.b.o. Is trying to get the budget document out, that might be a -- a -- you know a little digs rupt active to have a supervisor out for four straight days.
>> it's not four straight days Commissioner.
>> that's what we --
>> we have been implementing four day basic supervisory training classes for the past two years. We have had managers to provide raving review, if you will, on that training. Basically the core competencies that are outline understand the package that we offer -- outlined in the package that we offer to you. What we do is actually either start on Monday/tuesday then finish that four day session the following week, two days within the following week and we spread it out. So it's not a four-day, four consecutive day commitment because we recognize that that was a burden.
>> I'm so glad you clarified that because reading the documents you get the impression this is something oppressive. I was also interested in one of the comments, I won't say who in terms of gee that seems excessive if you haven't had problems. Life does not work that way. We could take the attitude of well, gee we don't get into trouble either, but we have to take 16 hours of mandated continuing education courses. You can't find a finer auditor than susan spitaro, but she has continuing education credits that she has to get.
>> h.r. Professionals, also.
>> same thing with the lawyers. They have to do continuing education. So I don't see that just because gee that seemed excessive, I haven't had any problems, but that somehow doesn't mean that we all can't find use to get consistent training so that we know that everybody has gone through it and has heard the same stuff. This is required of many of us in county government of required continuing education courses. It's not a reflection of somehow that you screwed up, it is about best practices and raising the bar in terms of all of us being better managers.
>> go ahead. I think that we have done an excellent job here. There's been a need. For training from our supervisors, we run into occasions where we have to deal with things that come before the Commissioners court dealing with the situations whereby maybe due process, something, maybe not being followed right or some supervisor just didn't know that they were not supposed to do this and things like that. So I think just -- this training is very, very necessary, long overdue. However, I would like to also say that -- that benefits of this -- of how will we measure this in the long run. Is there any type of measuring to -- that can be employed say, yes, we have made improvements because we have wanted to pursue and go into the strategic training for a -- for supervisors here in Travis County. To ensure that we get a better working relationship, a better workplace and we can cut down on the number of instances where we do run into problems. And there is somewhere that someone else has gone through this type of process, how did they measure their outcome and results to ensure that the performance, a lot of things that we are dealing with right now, is up to speed. So -- so with that, and along with the ins stance as far as maybe -- instance as far as asking, maybe also -- I know that you probably have, gone through there, want to look at some of the results of what we are doing here, that we go through this process. Sometimes it's in, sometimes we don't. I'm basically concerned to those areas, could you respond to that for me please, lendser.
>> yes, Commissioner.
>> one of the things that the team did do, we looked at best h.r. Practices within the public sector as well as the private sector.
>> okay.
>> what we saw is that many of the -- many of the entities actually adopted regarding the performance management system that we are proposing. In such a system, at the very beginning employees performance standards and measures are established before the annual review period would begin. What what we found and what's documented within the body of knowledge and feedback that we received is that once an employee, fully understands what is expected of them on a day-to-day basis, how -- how that performance will be measured that productivity within programmatic and educational level as well as from a management level completely increases. What is also shown to us is once that kind of road map is put into place, very often the kind of disciplinary issues that are more or less the outcomes that we are seeing now are really avoided by that kind of -- of road map or that kind of performance plan that lays out what is expected. The behavior is observed throughout that fiscal year. Feedback, of course, provided within a year. So it basically results in more theoretically disciplinary kinds of issues that would be coming before not only h.r. But ultimately to the court. We can't promise you as anything that there will not be some that will continue to come forward. By we expect that with the focus in this regard that that number would be reduced. We get a large number of employee relations calls within h.r. That many times within a structure like this would very often be taken care of. Another concern of the court had to do with policy compliance. One of the things that -- that we recognized as a department that -- that automation and the ability to manage and manipulate, if you will, human resources data, that we did not have the technology within h.r. To do that. What -- what h.r. Has done and -- with the support and in fact leadership of the i.t. Office over the past few months, we have been working to create two real critical programs that will really facilitate the implementation of this plan. One program is -- an augmentation, if you will, about what hte system that will allow us, at your corporate h.r. Level, to track employee reviews that are completed at the department level. What we will be able to do through working in the trach with the department -- working in the training with the departments is to have them enter into the h.t.e. System when an employee's appraisal has been completed. The program allows us then to generate reports to remind them of -- well, first of all to know if the appraisals have been completed. If they have not, to begin the reminding process, if you will, to say, you know, you are delinquent, not in compliance with the policy, and we need to have you do that. We have not as a department had that automated capacity to collect that centralized data as well as the ability to be able to report it and to track compliance against it. That system is -- as of last week, is very close to being ready to roll. I'm expecting that within just a week or so, that we'll be able to start capturing the performance appraisals that are completed for fy '04 within that system. In addition to that, the second piece of automation that has been extremely critical to us has been what we call the e registration program. That's one that I program. That's one that I know that i.t. Will probably be coming to you as a major deliverables as they did with the e open enrollment because it's just a significant -- it's just as significant to the training efforts as the automation was to our benefits enrollment. What we are able to do now is rather than have a manual process of people calling in, responding to e-mails, writing their names out on a list and cancel out, not being able to quickly fill that open slot, we are now able to have employees go online, with the training plan that we have put in place, to register for a particular class. If it is for some reason that they are not able to attend the class, then the next person on the list, if the waiting list has been created, will pop into the available space for that class. We will be able to report transcripts for individuals who have attended the training, and if we take your proposal one step further, assuming that it's approved, if it is required that all managers and supervisors attend the core competencies training at some level, four days, two days, whatever, we would be able to enter that into the system and be able to report out to you that, yes, linda Moore smith did attend all days, if you will, of that particular training. So our capacity internally has been somewhat limited from an automatic nation standpoint to be able to -- automation standpoint to be able to track the policies that you put in place. I think that perhaps Commissioner Davis that that somewhere strikes a balance in terms of the answer to your question?
>> yes, okay. It does. I just basically wanted to -- the latter part of that question was performance management. We have some departments who are actually executing a performance management system that they have created internal to their departments. We have some who are using performance appraisal tools that they have sort of tweak and turned and done things with it that we are hoping through your acceptance of our recommendation to create a universal performance management system that that would serve as just a basic criteria. Industry standard approved best practices, of what -- what was we would put in place, county-wide, for those without it to be able to use. And for those with such a system if their system is working to meet basic criteria. The flexibility is there. There would be no need for them to change their system to adopt the one that we are proposing.
>> okay.
>> your questions just bring out all kinds of things.
>> so that's -- and there were more recommendations embodied within on the --
>> couple more questions, from Commissioner Daugherty.
>> linda, how many people did you all get this to to respond? I mean how many folks did you all hand this thing out to department-wise?
>> we had the departments that were on the strategic team that I mentioned and then went out to all elected and appointed officials as well as the h.r. Coordinators and personnel liaisons.
>> would that be 50? 45 elected officials in Travis County. I would think --
>> i'd say more like maybe 100 individuals or even more.
>> well, were you -- well, 100. So were you pleased to get five responses? I mean are there more responses than what --
>> the responses that you have are those that we received.
>> out of 100, we have received five comments about what we are going through right now.
>> that's correct.
>> do you find that odd? Was there a deadline?
>> I really wasn't too surprised because a part of what we are introducing is something that is pretty common quite frankly within management and employer structures. We have the pieces of it. So my thought is that probably many of those who received it were somewhat familiar with it and were either doing some elements of that at their department level or the fact that they did not respond, that they were fine with it. So that was an assumption that was made and feel pretty comfortable with that based on prior experiences in requesting feedback.
>> well, given that I think that the reason that I was interested in seeing this whole process is that we were concerned about a couple of things. Number one, performance measures and making sure that we -- that we, you know, clearly articulated with the departments and people about jobs because when we go into executive session and talk about employee issues, I mean those are -- I mean coming from the private sector, those have been really eye-opening experiences for me. And so that's number one. Number two, because I think that -- maybe we don't have an unusual amount of litigation/risk management pay out for -- foe these sorts of -- for these sorts of issues. Do we? I mean on a comparison basis, I mean, do you know where Travis County stands compared to let's say the other eight or 10 of the larger urban counties.
>> I would say not unusual, but my observation has been that those that you have paid out of, those that are training issues. Issues that managers should have very much been aware of. And had performance or disciplinary actions been managed through a system such as what we are talking about. Your numbers would have been much more than what they have been. I do not want to leave an impression that this is a cure-all for any lawsuit that you might get. But -- but certainly those that I have observed were primarily training issues.
>> do we have any tracking system? Like if I were to say linda I would like to see a department in -- in -- what issues come out of departments or areas or whatever, would that be something that h.r. Would be able to say, I mean, yeah, here you've got 8 of these in a year, it came out of -- out of precinct 3 Gerald Daugherty's office?
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> ... That I would say h.r., That's your job. I mean somebody either needs to be trained a lot better, somebody needs to be -- needs to find another job because they are not very good at that. But I just -- you know, I hope that's kind of where we are getting to. And I am a little puzzled that maybe 95 out of 100 people didn't fill out that they need to do respond to this thing because they are kind of happy with what it is and they've never had an issue. If they haven't had an issue --
>> except if you look at it in perspective and the departments that either participated or responded, you look at the sheriff's department, which is fully a third of the population of the county's employees. You look at [inaudible] which is a very large group. You look at h.h.s., Again, a very large group. And then h.r. And the administrative operations. You have represented a very -- the majority, I believe, of employees in Travis County or a very large portion of the employees in Travis County. The other group would be the judicial and juvenile court. But those three departments and h.h.s. Would be a very large chunk of the population.
>> and I suppose h.r. Really doesn't have the ability to walk into the sheriff's office and say, sheriff, you know, there's some issues that we are intending to have in executive session over whatever. Can I help you -- can we look at how your people are trained? Isn't that -- is that something, linda that -- I'm asking that question. You have the ability to do?
>> well, [inaudible], but if there is an issue, I kind of pick up the phone and call whether I have that formal authority to any he elected official or not to see that as part of my responsibility as whether there's authority or not. The sheriff's office, it happens to be one of the departments that is, as we speak, if it hasn't already completed training on its performance management system, they are in the process of doing that. Backing up just a bit, tracking employee relations issues and being able to draw people into training, I mentioned a little bit earlier that it's based on the employee relations calls that we receive that very often we plan our training calendar and those are the people we recruit in to do that. A part of our ability, as alicia mentioned, and it ties in with the automated capacity I talked about earlier is that we have been handicapped in some regard and not being able to collect that data. We have a fantastic i.t. Department that's working with us in the ways that I talked about, but what is still missing within your h.r. Department is what we would call a human resources information system. Not unlike the [indiscernible] system where we track risks, but this is a h.r. Specific information system that would allow us to do exactly what you are talking about to a much greater level.
>> and I can see where joe harlow and [indiscernible] said he would be happy to work with that.
>> exactly. And that's something that just as we pursued and were able to get the risk information for someone would probably be talking with you perhaps in f.y. '05 or '06 about the value of moving us to the next level by acquiring a h.r. System and that's one of the items included this the recommendations.
>> is there a recommendation that the two day versus the four-dane training session?
>> what we would like to do, if there is a need to come back to you with that breakout, we would.
>> I think I would like to see that and the reasons for two versus four days.
>> if we could bring that back to you. We have it broken out, but I would rather bring that back as a stand-alone.
>> is our goal to have at some point a written curriculum that covers the full [indiscernible]?
>> exactly.
>> the court doesn't want to go through the four-day exercise but wants to see the program, we can get it and read it.
>> that's correct. That takes us to the information stage. We would be spending all of April as well as may doing the development of that curriculum with the first classes proposed to begin in June.
>> okay.
>> back to one point, judge, that Commissioner Gomez mentioned earlier about resources, one of the recommendations that's included in the team report is the need for additional support in entering data through the automated systems that i.t. Has created. Looking at existing resources within h.r. And what the team recognized is that we need additional woman power, manpower, person power, if you will, to enter data, retrieve data, and the proposal and recommendation is we take an existing slot within h.r. That is currently vacant and reclass that from a pay grade 8 to 10. That's no additional resources required within our f.y. '04 budget. The dollars are there. [indiscernible] are there to support it. But with the added look of data entry and retrieval that is a recommendation also.
>> if I go through the four-day training as a manager, one recommendation is that thereafter I am a minimum of 16 hours.
>> yes.
>> what's the justification for that?
>> employment laws change, trends change. We daily receive information on things that are going on within the h.r. Industry that it's important that we communicate. It's a continuing education as we talked about, we would have a shopping list, if you will, of classes that a manager might choose to take. Eight hours the beginning of the fiscal year and perhaps eight at the end of the year. It's a part of a continuous development. The whole learning is life-long concept that --
>> can you cover that in eight hours I guess what it amounts to?
>> we probably could. And there would still be other offerings that if individuals choose to take more than an eight hour, those offerings would be available to them.
>> there's a long list of recommendations, some more important than others. Which ones do we need to discuss further today? What you are looking for today is for the court basically to approve the recommendations and go to the next -- authorize going to the next step.
>> yes, that's exactly right.
>> [indiscernible] is still in place.
>> yes. The recommendation is for the court to approve the recommendations of the strategic team to institute a performance management system that would enable us to better manage the performance and disciplinary actions of employees. > well, it seems to me like that would be the end result for me. I think the first thing and if I can just kind of remind myself as I state out loud as to why I was interested in doing this was in order to save money for taxpayers and not having to pay out money for lawsuits, to settle lawsuits because managers were not properly trained in handling employees' rights. And I think we can achieve that through the training of attending 16 hours or whatever number we settle on a year. And I think we have a spatter of everything throughout the county, and some of those people work for us and some do not. But I think especially the ones who do work for us, I think that we can get to the point of saying lawsuits will be reduced if we go through this training. And we have managers or people who are promoted to management positions, we make sure that they have these core competent ten sees because then we will make sure they make good decisions that will not end up in lawsuits. And some of the lawsuits, I'm trying to remember, were over very basic things. They are not complicated. They are very basic. Common sense things. And so that was why I was interested in just the core competency and I think if we take care of that we will reduce the lawsuits. Rather spend that money on something else or return to it the taxpayer if we can. So to me it's a matter of first things first, and if we can get to the point of having all managers and those who aspire to be managers to go through this training. And if we can have that in place, then I think the next logical step would be to go to the automated system which would then track how those decisions are being made. Nonetheless, the bottom line for me is to reduce lawsuit or settlement money on lawsuits based on management decisions that could have been prevented.
>> that's my main goal here.
>> it's for those reasons I move we approve the recommendations of the strategic team and authorize them to go to the next step. Also ask them to consider comments made by the members of the court today. And the next thing that we see, assuming this motion passes, will be what?
>> the core competency.
>> I second that motion. I second the motion and also, again, it would be very good for me to make a comparison as far as someone that is already in place, has the system already in place somewhere and see how they are faring with it. Did it really reduce -- or make a reduction in the number of lawsuits, for example, or did the disciplinary performance standards, were they acceptable and everyone basically were able to go forward with those particular performance -- standard performance measures. It would be good to see what we're getting into, but based on if there is an existing model out there that's working and they are having some success, it would be good to really see that.
>> what can we do is develop a baseline.
>> okay.
>> is develop a baseline. At 2003, 2004.
>> okay.
>> what was -- the number and the amount of cases that you dealt with. And that would be a baseline that we would compare in the future. The other thing, I believe, that you will see coming to you also within the next year is the proposed revisions in current policies. There are some policies that we have now that are good policies. The progressive discipline policy is a good policy. It just requires some tweaking and some reintroduction and training on that policy so that people use it, so that you don't go from this person is not doing a good job all the way to firing someone. There are steps in between that you take to make sure that there is an opportunity for notification, for corrective action, for a performance review, for a full due diligence and due process for the individual and that will minimize the ability of anyone to come back and have any legal recourse for -- to come back on a dismissal. Those sofrts policies we need to tweak and get right back out and remind people that they must follow those sorts of policies and progressive discipline. [multiple voices]
>> clarification of your motion, are we saying to them the next steps, are we going to spell those out?
>> the next steps are incorporated into recommendations.
>> yes, they are.
>> a lot of specific ones. Approval means we basically are saying we approve the concept, let's go ahead and [indiscernible]. The last one deals with basically better training space.
>> yes.
>> and I take it that by approving the recommendations basically we authorize getting the facilities and trying to come up with better space.
>> the other thing is because we are a member, county of [indiscernible] as well is maybe we can share some abilities with them and they are so close by.
>> we have explored that possibility, and what the committee looked at, there are a number of sites, but what the committee was concerned about is that Travis County as an employer needed better training space. With multiple classes that are often rolling at the very same time. P.a.c. Schedule versus our schedule and the time lines we deliver to you, we were looking in turn to Travis County in addition to using [indiscernible] space, but primarily our training space within Travis County.
>> and c.u.c.
>> yes.
>> we are looking at every opportunity because you are right, they have a beautiful train facilities and we are also looking internally especially with some of the facilities that we've expanded to. All the training would not take place just here in the downtown campus much we plan to also have it available at the other facilities where there are a lot of employees.
>> the other thing is space is such a premium around here that maybe this is also an issue that could go to the space committee, although space committee hasn't met in a little while.
>> I can also tell you that Gerald and I have discovered a lot of hidden jewels with our social service agencies that have a lot of space for training and they offer it up for use by other community groups. And we've come -- we've discovered a lot of places in our sorts of parts of town that have plenty of free parking and these off-site and beautiful rooms their boards are meeting in and are available and we help fund them and they have made that offer. So we're happy to share those names as well.
>> what you need is authorization -- I see follow-up work and a whole lot of work needing to be done.
>> I have one more comment, judge. Alicia, with that base initiative -- initiation of this particular program, I think Commissioner Daugherty brought up a good point and that was looking at risk management to see what we've actually had to pay out. I don't know if that's a good analogy, but it would be good to know exactly what that figure is and you can get that through risk management capability, but it would be good to see something and see if there is actually also a reduction. Because it does get expensive to the taxpayers when we may could avoid spending money when we could have had a supervisor to get a lot of that. So I think that's a good step in the right direction. I just want to commend you all again for doing such a great job. Thank you.
>> any more discussion of the motion? All in favor? Show Commissioners Gomez, Davis and Sonleitner and yours truly in tpaeufrplt voting against Commissioner Daugherty. Thank you very much. Appreciate your hard work, dedication, et cetera.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 6, 2004 9:31 AM