Travis County Commssioners Court
April 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 36
36 consider and take appropriate action on issues related to the implementation of facts and other responsibilities related to county court functions. Someone from the county attorney's office, namely jim connally will let me know whether 37 is ready today or whether we need to take another -- week on it.
>> good after newspaper, dana debeauvoir. This is -- basically replaces the last page already identical to what you have in the packet, there is one last page update. All right. What I need to briefly talk to the court about today is to get some indication from you about what sort of policy you would like to follow in some particular areas that have to do with facts implementation, what we mean by facts implementation is Travis County has been hard at work for a few years now developing an ingreated justice -- intergreated justice that that allows us to have access to the same information that allows us to more more efficiently through the court system. That combined effort is about to be launched, the county clerk's office serves as an important point in making sure that that information gets included into the system and then shared with everyone else. With that in mind we have done time and motion studies, how long will it take us to enter into this extra information that's going to be shared with the courts and other offices, how many people will it take to handle the volume that we are anticipating for fy '05. In your package you will find a reported that shows, it is on page 7, a report that shows the kinds of tasks that our police were tested on, the modules that were used in the assessment for time and motion study, then exactly whether we are adding on to existing data, creating any brand new set of data, this chart gives you an idea of exactly where we stand. On the far left-hand side, any time that you see a zero listed there, that means it's a brand new task that's being undertaken. Now, with that in mind, with the implementation of facts, we have known all along that it was going to take the point person who creates all of the data was going to need additional resources to make facts implementation work for the county clerk and for everybody else. And we had some guesses, all along, about what kind of resources would be needed. This time and motion study takes away the guesswork. It tells us exactly how many resources we are going to need in specific areas so that the court then can make some decisions about as a policy matter what kinds of things do you want to do for the future. One presumption is that you would want to implement fact. We have spent a lot of effort and energy and resources getting this thing ready to be implemented so we assume you want to make the most of it. So the first set of summary information is on page 5. Of your package. It goes through and lists how many people will be needed to make, just making the computer system workable. Then there are some additional areas where the court has some options. Things that you may or may not want to do and you may want to do them in '05 or '06, this is for you to have some facts on which to base your policy for the future. One of the first one that's comes to mind is bond. We don't do a lot of information collecting bonds right now, to the extent that we capture the name of the defendant and the name of the bondor, it's done at the sheriff's office, their system is not compatible with, there is no interface between their system and facts. So we have to figure out a way to get a lot more of the bond information into the system and then shared with everybody else. So how to handle bonds is included in one of your first options. Court support. I briefed you in the last budget cycle that the court had decided that we would budget approximately a half a person a day per court. And that with the reality of the jail overcrowding task force members, jail councilmember lewis called docket and rocket -- jail docket and rocket docket we are basically at a person a day we have tried to absorb that. We do run backlogs, it's not an ideal situation to give the court time to, you know, measure exactly what the impact of the jail overcrowding initiatives were in the court system. We now have that information. It is before you. To -- to correct the imbalance that when we pulled people away from assigned tasks and put them in the courts to correct that imbalance is two f.t.e.'s. If the court decides that they do not wish to fund the current level of court support inside the courtrooms, what I will do is I will take the amount that the court has decided and ration that among the judges. It's not a policy that I would recommend to you. But that will be the reality that we will be in. With the facts environment and everybody relying on the information that I'm going to give them, I will know longer be able to take it from that one pocket data entry and send it over to another pocket. We will have to rely on getting the data entry done timely. Finally, and probably the one that is the biggest issue for the court, and that has to do with immediate assessments. What we mean by that is that a defendant who comes to court, is sentence odd a particular day, might be given the opportunity to pay their entire fine, along with their court costs at the time the sentencing is continue and there have been some discussions about whether we could offer a discount to people who pay immediately, certainly we could offer credit card programs. This is a brand new program that the county is considering. Whether I do it or whether the county court at law judges run it, makes no difference to me. I'm not particularly seeking to run in court assessments. Immediate assessments. But to give somebody an idea what it would take to make that kind of a program work, I have given you an outline in a measurement -- in a workload measure for what it would take to accomplish that program. Basically one person per court. And the -- so whoever does it, now you have appear idea for what the -- you have an idea of what the cost side would be. The next question you want answered is where, if any, where is the revenue? That my offset this kind of expenditure, do we want to do this kind of a program. That's a policy matter for you to decide. On page 5 I have gone through the first half of the page. These are items that affect just the misdemeanor division. Below the line are the items that affect civil probate. Civil probate will also be implementing the facts system, facts and vista. We will be taking an approach with the implementation with facts and vista that's a little bit different than the way we would have normally done it. But we made a decision to help out the district clerk. It's going to be fine, I want you to be aware of what we are doing first is bringing up the document management system first. So that they will have a way to track their paper, the actual motions, orders, whatever it is. Then subsequent to that, the court management system will be brought up, which is actually facts. Now, fact and vista are going to be side by side for a while, each requiring the same data entry, you would read that as double data entry. Enter the same information in each of them to make them both work. But ultimately we end up with the two of those being combined together, merged and we into case information and document information into a single system that is facts and vista, both document management and case management. I made the assumption in trying to figure out how to do implementation for this side of it. That if we could get those two systems joined together, the interfaces written, within one year, we could take a little bit different approach to the implementation of facts in the civil probate side than we have in misdemeanor. And here's the idea. Once again it will take approximately four f.t.e.'s, it will take four f.t.e.'s. Again the time and motion study is in your packet that just shows the stop watch measure of how many second it takes to enter different kinds of documents and all. But when we look at trying to put facts and advice take together, we could use temporaries to get us over that hump of the double take it take entry. Ones that part of it is finished then the temporaries could go away. The workload level shows that we would need four temporaries to manage the double data entry. Once we have one system then we discontinue the temporary program. Now, for the court's purposes, you are going to probably want to talk to the fines and fees committee and the auditor about which of these programs are required and so which basis are they required. How many do they cost and how much do they cost and how much would they anticipate bringing in? From the money, I have given you the measure side of it. From the budget side of it, on page 12, you will see the total for misdemeanor, approximately $897,000, if the court wished to implement all of the programs I have just mentioned. I also broke the amounts -- them out separately, so if you just wanted to do a mix and match of one or two or three of them, you can add that up and figure out which one is worth how much. Then on page -- actually, your very last page, I have a budget update for what it will cost us to do the approach in civil probate of the four f.t.e.'s to ism. Facts, plus the four temporaries for facts and vista. The amount is $456,000 and again it's broken out between the temporaries and the facts permanent experts. We are about to go through a pretty steep learning curve with this. I should say this is actually a conservative approach. There's very -- in fact there's no wiggle room in here for training, we are just going to do the best we can to get up and going as fast as we can. All right. I think that I have covered, I have a couple of my staff members with me if you want some detailed answers to time and motion study or anything of these other issues. They can help me make sure that I get you the correct answer. Probably today. The only other thing that I anticipate that the court is going to probably want to consider this matter more than once. You are probably going to want to bring this back a couple of times. But for today's purposes, in your deliberations, the one action that you do need is to give instructions to p.b.o. To started including the facts implementation requirements in their preliminary budget. Questions.
>> yeah, dana, I guess I have several. Maybe I need to wait until everybody finish theirs. But I guess just to get things started, right now I know [indiscernible] there's reasons for that as far as the slippage of target dates, implementing, I'm kind of concerned about that. I think all of us are. Your request as far as f.t.e.'s is something that we need to look at, I'm really looking at all that can be addressed if we -- if we don't have a firm handle on the implementation, I understand the first thing should be the district clerk. Then we work in from other aspects. Is there any -- is there any other way as far as funding is concerned, of these requests that you have put forth, is there any -- any fees or other offset ways of looking at how -- at how these fets are to be -- f.t.e.s are to be, a, if there is something that we end up doing, I'm basically looking at some of the fees that we have looked at I guess last year, I don't know if it's directly represented and tied into this operation, but there was some moneys made available I guess through fees. I can't recall them right at this point. I think records management and some other fees, money as far as court supported efforts, that indigent money can be used through those filings fees that could actually offset an expense coming from the general fund per se. But is offset with fines and fees. Your can he has several points. The first is that -- your question has several points. Yours you would want to confirm with the -- what the schedule is, start the program of providing this additional information to the other offices. The county clerk's office was anticipated all along as being sort of the -- of the first point person in this new program that we would be the ones that would be gathering in the data, entering the data, for us it makes for a radical departure from the way we have done business in the past but everybody else downstream benefits if we get it right. The answer to the rest of your question is, yes, there are opportunities. And a -- in a couple of areas. All of the fines and fees are established by state law. So if we were looking at -- at increasing any -- any state fees, court costs, any of that, then you would be looking at a trip to the legislature to do that. But on the immediate assessments, that is the point of, is there money that would offset implementing that brand new program. The answer is to be found with leroy ellis and fines and fees committee. They are looking at whether there is additional funding, how much, would it be worth it for us to do the program, should we do it, should we not? So they are going to be prepared to give you that answer. So it's sort of a yes kind of is the answer to your question Commissioner.
>> okay. I guess technical services, something they call the t.s.r. In the overall capturing of the facts to make sure that it is where it should be, that is another hurdle that -- that has to be addressed. I -- I had a real good overview recently looking at -- our effective tax rate, looking at the things that we have to deal with. Part of that overview, as far as the budget is concerned, dealing with p.p.o. Is certain things that -- that I think is very important to us and that's to overcome some of the obstacles. I think that in dealing with this facts implementation. I'm really concerned because I don't feel comfortable right today looking at these obstacle that's we have to overcome dealing with the t.s.r.'s for where we need to be. Of course another slippage, another slippage, another slippage as far as facts. I just need to get a better grip on that. Say this is what it's going to be, folks. This is just a subsystem of the overall i.j.s. System, this is just one component of it. However it's a major component in the i.j.s. Scheme of things, is the facts system itself, subsystem. I'm having some very -- various difficulty with that, until I'm able to really get a handle on it, more so, I'm just kind of reluctant to say too much or do too much. I hope you understand what I'm saying.
>> no. You and me both. You and I are in the same seat. I don't know when it's going to come on board, either. And I'm anxiously awaiting and trying to figure out when -- I mean it's a heavy responsibility for me to start this up and take care of everybody else down the line. We have had slippage in the schedule and it has been fwee I wish that I could get an ironclad answer. But I don't have that answer. I do think that i.t.s. Is closer to being able to give us a better estimate today than they were six months ago. But yes I feel the same sort of unease about exactly when am I supposed to start this program. So that I can be ready to go when the time comes, even if I don't know now exactly when that's going to be. For your budget purposes I made the assumption that we would be ready to go October 1. It's a reasonable assumption. It's the best that I had to go on at the time.
>> okay. And the other question that kind of technical. So I want -- I won't propose or suggest those questions at this time to you. They are kind of of a technical nature.
>> you want to talk to its about that.
>> thank you so is your request today that we put this on the radar and be aware of it or direct ppo to put it in the blamary budget?
>> -- in the preliminary budget.
>> that is really a matter of policy decision by the court. I think you are going to want to say for facts implementation just the basics move forward. You may also want to say the same thing about in court support. But I'm wondering if you are ready yet to include in the preliminary budget bonds and need assessments because you don't have your questions answered yet about whether it's worth it to you. I would say yes and no. Facts and in court support and then the proposed solution for how we handle civil probate are probably where we are headed anyway. The question is what's the court's policy going to be for the rest of the items.
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> apparently it would be a whole lot larger than I envisioned. It seems to me at some point during the budget process we need to take a look at the whole picture. It may be that we have to stagger in implementation if the county clerk is going in first and at some point it seals to me that we have to figure out what's our return on the additional investment. The other thij is what I would like to see is everybody sort of getting together and coming to a consensus. I assume that the district clerk is putting together her presentation now. And from the last taskforce meeting that I went to, there are five or six other departments that will be impacted one way or the other. They won't be requesting the same number of f.t.e.'s --
>> I doubt seriously. We are the point person that creates the data for everybody else. I doubt that you're going to see, even through the district clerk, the need for the origination support.
>> the one question I don't think I ever got answered is if people are doing this now, who are they and where will they end up in the new process?
>> right.
>> I'm on the bail bond board and that question comes up repeatedly. I know the county clerk does a lot of that work, the county attorney does, the latter part of it, and I'm sure the clerks in the courtroom do some, pretrial services, sheriff's office. I often leave the bail bond board meeting thinking that we've got five or six departments working and a whole lot of people together. And I wonder fire department we take all these people and put them in one room why the room wouldn't be full.
>> I understand. [overlapping speakers].
>> exactly. We can add all the ones we're currently doing. I think I can give you a quick answer. If you look at page 7 and 8 on your time and motion study, on the first page you're going to see where it says gone and it has way down on the left-hand side and you'll see it says there look-ups, forfeitures and reinstatements. Right now what we do with bond is we accept basically a piece of paper from the sheriff that we file and it's worked when the case comes up. That's all that happens. Then if you'll turn to page 8 and if you look at approximately the same position, you'll see that now we're talking about an initial bond entry, bond status change, bond closure, and then the things that we're currently doing now. So you can see that it's -- where the three zeros are on page 8 where it says bonds, those are what nobody is doing right now. This is all brand new work. And this is the work that's going to get us to the point where the bail bond board needs to be, which is to have that account on balance, information for how much bonding amount has been written out per attorney and per company, and how much have they got leftover. And we do not capture any of that information right now.
>> in the bond area I know there is additional money because we've picked up the effort three or four years ago and have annually been generating much more revenue.
>> yes. And I'm almost prepared to give you a number on that. They've been studying it.
>> but i've been left with the impression that we're not getting a good accounting of f.t.e.'s in the various departments. And you may know 100% what's in the clerk's office, but as to the three or four departments, do you see what I'm saying?
>> yes, sir.
>> so our approach is to do a much better job with bonds, which I favor 110%, and the question is okay, exactly what is it we need to do, how many folks do we need to do it and where do they need to be and what's there now? And if they're there now when you start putting those folks out, then it becomes difficult. In addition to doing bonds, they also do a lot of other stuff. Do you see what I'm saying?
>> yes. The first part of your answer at least I can give you from the county clerk's perspective. The amount of f.t.e.'s that are currently allotted to these particular jobs, okay, are listed in your fy '03 work volume and current f.t.e.'s. You can tell how many people are doing this job right now in those first two columns. Other offices I assume could go through the same time and motion study and come up with a similar matrix to answer that question for you.
>> but if we look at the bond program, should the Commissioners court be forced to address five or six different departments one at a time or should we see a two or three-page document that is the county bond program where basically we set it all out?
>> which would you prefer?
>> obviously all of them at one time. And one document that represents a consensus. Otherwise my guess is I don't know that we are that much informed. We're informed about your perspective about what you need, but I don't know that that puts us in any better position to make the decision. [overlapping speakers].
>> once the shock of these numbers wore off once you left my office between then and today, and I'm still shocked. But I'm also left with the impression that part of this is what should be our effort to come up with a county system. A system to get the job done. And if we do that and conclude that we operate more efficiently that way, more effectively, then we have to deal with whatever price tag we end up with. But we ought to be in agreement on the price tag. And I don't know that we ought to look at five or six price tags or one big function county-wide. Do you see what I mean? And when we build the ideas that now when we talk about facts, we started out with what was ics, it was a county wide system that would cost a large amount of money. That amount has gotten larger and now we're being told in order to operate that system, we have to spend a whole lot more than we had a right to expect.
>> I can't speak for the other offices, although I do think that its and p.b.o. Can gather that information and get you that. In my budget presentation last year, I referred to as as the perfect storm, the three areas that were all coming together that were going to cause especially in this critical role of being the point person in implementing this new system, these were the resources that were going to be needed. Now, when you think about bonds, there's a lot of different aspects to bonds. The one that's the more money maker is forfeiture, which is not the whole picture, but it's bond forfeiture. And we do have people assigned in civil probate division and also in the county attorney's office who do nothing but work bond forfeitures. And it is a lucrative business. They more than pay for their employees. I would anticipate the court would want to see a net report for how much money that constitutes. And I'm a bit at the mercy of the county attorney. They give me plenty of volume to work on, but they really dictate what the volume is to me.
>> I guess where I was after my equally vigorous discussion that I had with the county clerk was I saw that some of these things were very much heads up, high facts is coming and things we've been talking about aren't going to come to fruition, but I saw a great deal of what's on here as being totally optional and discretionary, places we can go to, and whether it's the county clerk or some other division or it might even be cscd related to some of the assessment stuff since they're doing a bang up job now on getting their money situation in order, to their credit. I saw this as being optional. And if you want to go that way, here are time and motion studies, whether it be the clerk or somebody else do it. But I agree with the judge, there's some of these things that we need to have the full big picture of so what do people think ought to be the answer? Is it the clerk, is it the district clerk, is it cscd, is it the courts? Where can we have offsets, mr. Davis is asking, on some of the assessments. If assessments gives us more money that we're not getting before, coming to us, that's good stuff. Is there anything that can be offset? I also ask the question whether any of this will fit into the category of any of the o whatever special funding that either the county clerk or the district clerk has, especially related to start-ups of new kinds of systems. And I'm almost wondering if it leaves the six temporary on vista, whether that would be something that would qualify under the kinds of things that you can use your special funds for or not. And I don't know the answer. I'm not asking for the answer right now.
>> the answer to that you could get from the county attorney.
>> yeah, is this for us to maximize where we might have offsets and then to be able to make business decisions about, well, gee, if you put in seven f.t.e.'s, are we getting much for the seven f.t.e.'s other than speeding up the state getting their money and it doesn't do much with the Travis County bonds.
>> can we really generate additional revenue to pay for that, or your idea that if we were to take a completely different approach in your option. And these are all options for you. Maybe if you did want to partner with cscd, since they're already in the business, maybe you want to look at exactly how to merge it because maybe then your picture of the resources and the revenue might look a little differently.
>> and to me it was always a discussion that whenever any one division or groups of divisions come together in terms of a new funding initiative, they are seemingly required to come to Commissioners court either in a work session or a Tuesday session that basically say here's the issue, take it to the next level. It does not mean it's preapproved into the budget. It doesn't mean anything other than it gets to move forward for us to deliberate further and for p.b.o. To do analysis that on new initiatives you sprung on us in budget it's going to get zero --
>> he didn't have time to consider what to do. The point of my bringing this to you today, it's not that I'm anticipating that you're going to know exactly how you're going to do this. It's to give you time to make your decisions and to weigh what your options are. That's my purpose in bringing it to you now ahead of budget.
>> and we deeply appreciate it. [ laughter ]
>> you bet.
>> yes, sir?
>> well, I think there are 35, 38 urban counties, somewhere in there. Is there anyone that has a complete system, that has an integrated system that could be used as some sort of a model? I mean, certainly there's somebody in the state of Texas that's done this that's more complete? Joe, you're shaking your head no. So -- [overlapping speakers].
>> there are pieces and parts in other large counties. Dallas does some of this, but no, there's nobody that has completed what we are attempting.
>> and in fact, dc has a combined r.f.p. Out right now related to ijf. And even though we're ahead, there are pieces of what cuc is doing that is still going to help our system regardless of which way the ijs goes.
>> there are advantages. They learn from our mistakes.
>> all right. Then I guess the thing that i've heard that's the most impactful to me is that we are still a few months away from its being able to tell us I'm more confident today about giving you this information saying that now is the start of what we really ought to try to do this. And I see joe coming up. And because obviously the only thing that -- if we were to embark on just the top part of page 5, I guess the only thing it would buy us is the fact that we start the facts implementation and we get some of that behind us, so what I would fear is that we get into that and then all of a sudden we find out, oh, we're -- maybe we shouldn't have done it that way. Maybe that's not very likely, but why not wait until you're really ready to pull the trigger on this thing and make your life easier, dana, to just go you're right, joe, tell me when to pull the trigger on this thing rather than me going through the motions here of laying these things out and kind of guessing this or that. Immediate assessments, my inclination would be that, yeah, if you get somebody and they're about to be released or whatever is done, yes, you owe us $162. Step right over there and pay it. And by the way, you have a credit card, three percent discount on that. Get the money. I mean, you would think that that would work. And then you've got to start asking all these crazy questions like can you do that legally, only to find out that oh, no, the state law says you can't do that. But I'm more inclined to want to do this whenever it's really time and back into that, joe, if this is your gig and even though it's dana's, the county clerk, let's use its and say, okay, we've gotten this thing as good as we can. This is as good a time as we think we can really sign off on. Go. I mean, I would be more -- tell me what's wrong with that thinking.
>> well, I think that's good, sound thinking. Our issue is that the accounting systems that were not part of the original product have been put into the product so that you've taken an old cash basis accounting system, you turn it into double entry bookkeeping system that will give us the kind of gasb 34 reporting and all the other accounting things that we need to be doing. If we go through the testing, we get so far, fix that problem, and then here comes another accounting issue. Basically the -- where we are today is that everything was done correctly and everybody entered in all the accounting information correctly, then we'd be fine. It's whenever somebody makes a mistake and then it's well, how are we going to correct that? And you start scratching your head about well, we need to put another routine in so that whenever that problems happens, we are able to correct it. That's where we are in the process. We're very close.
>> how common is that when you say a mistake, wrong information? And if that happens, then why is that acceptable?
>> you want to catch them now. You want to know every mistake possible now.
>> I agree.
>> as a practical matter, one of the things you have to do in the accounting portion is to take into account customer's error. People come to our counter, they intended to file in hays county or intended to file in the district clerk's office. And we need to be able to reverse that in such a way that you keep a sound accounting for every dollar that we've ever accepted. And part of the function that we're -- that they're working on is how do we do not just a user error, but any kind of thing you have to be able to void or reverse or correct in some way. Keep the accounting solid.
>> and the real problem is not just double entry bookkeeping type system. You think, well, that's pretty simple. But what really happens is once you enter the information in the system, it is put out the back side to 25 more different categories, so then those all have to be reversed. So that's where the problems are coming in.
>> now we're getting to what the part of your question, and that is why aren't we doing this when we need to pull the trigger? We still have to work around what is our budgetary process. And unfortunately, some of this head's up is we're fixing to head into budget season. And even if it turns out that joe says I'm ready to pull the trigger October 2nd, we have to respect the fact that we have to make budgetary decisions or at least put money into reserve for budgetary decisions that aren't ready and fully cooked. We just to to work around the budgetary thing. If this were October 4th or 5th, we'd be in trouble because it may be that the time we need to pull the trigger we've already set our budget for the year and we can't plan ahead. I felt this was always about the true head's up and for us to start talking, but there's obviously a lot more talking that needs to occur because I think he's correct, we need to have a consensus by all the departments who do key strokes. This is what we need to do and what are all of the offsets and who is going to be doing some of this collection of fines and fees coming out of your taskforce?
>> why don't we ask the taskforce to move toward giving us final recommendations in 60 days? That would be July.
>> or earlier.
>> no later than.
>> no later than 60 days. If we get it before then, fine. That would give us two months afterwards to -- we normally get the preliminary budget in early July. So if this is not in the preliminary budget, at least it would be on the front burner. That way -- so if we could get the taskforce to look at the specific issues with a bit more urgency than so far. I don't think there's a perfect answer. It really is. That will be our best shot. Given all we know, that's our shot. On some of them it seems like we moved in a certain direction anyway. The tax assessor kind of decided collecting real property taxes is a whole lot better for them than collecting a fee from criminal cases.
>> they were nice to help us out. I'm sure he would be able to respond to your suggestion that they wind it up... [overlapping speakers].
>> along with that, I think it's very important, I think, to really get a firm grip on the facts, where we are. And the last time I had spoke with y'all, the way we talked about June as being a relatively target date that we could really have something in concrete as far as facts is concerned. I just now need to know where are we on that, per se, will we have the facts imitation in by June, especially if we get some kind of report back in 60 days as far as the recommendation from the fines and fees committee, which was also made also -- also addressed some of his concern, but I just really need to get a firm grip on the facts situation and where we will be in June as an example.
>> the accounting issues, if they're the only thing holding us up, we can get those resolved in the next two or three weeks or it could take another six weeks to resolve those. We're doing the best we can when we got it done to try to get it done as quickly as we can.
>> we'll live with that, I guess, at this point, but I really need to have -- we need something right now. We've got 60 days, but there's a lot of questions I still have and I'm not going to ask them today, believe me, I'm not, but there's many questions that I still need to get answers to.
>> move that we direct the taskforce to address the issues raised by the county clerk in her report. And also to the extent that these issues impact other departments, ask that the taskforce give a comprehensive review and report back to the Commissioners court no later than 60 days from today.
>> second that.
>> judge, would you mind a bit of, I guess, a friendly amendment on that? I guess what i'd like to see is how p.b.o. And its -- and I think that joe has told me that he's fairly confident that the f.t.e. Numbers and projections are fairly close. Close to what dana thinks that she will need out of this. I mean, her department showed what it will take to put the work in, but I would feel comfortable with p.b.o. In particular looking and seeing if they have any input into this as well to go on. With what you're --
>> that's fine. Y'all are on the taskforce, right? [overlapping speakers]
>> I want a clarification too as the clerks and helping you out on the taskforce. Is the taskforce right now is focused solely on collection of court fines and fees, which includes immediate assessments. The rest of the stuff, bonds, fax implementation, the vista, the civil probate stuff, that's separate. That's not within the purview of this huge group. And do you want now this huge group to talk about all of this? [overlapping speakers] that's the clarification. I want to make sure that we all understand what you're directing the taskforce to do in addition. And I know they're working diligently to get the final recommendations, the taskforce to land on final recommendations as soon as possible because once the budget season starts, we're 100% budget, you know.
>> the up shot of that is that I think you just need to ask two different groups. You need to ask fines and fees to go ahead and conclude their analysis as well as input from the facts ijs committee. It just in two different places.
>> that might be what it does.
>> right. I just wanted to get that -- [overlapping speakers].
>> that we don't muddy the waters on court fines and fees.
>> the taskforce is to look at bonds. There is money in bonds. And for two or three years we've talked about running that more efficiently. And lack of automation has kept us from doing it. I mean, I'm convinced that we can -- for every dollar we spend there, we really stand to collect an additional two or three dollars.
>> that's fine. I just wanted clarification.
>> I'm thinking that it should be a little less complicated than some of the other stuff. But my objection really was for the taskforce to work on issues that the taskforce had been working on. But if you don't work on bonds, we should be able to get four or five of the right people to look at that.
>> and may I also offer that those four or five people, that you want to have one or two that come from the bail bond board. Because they would have the more practical knowledge about how it is actually I plemented.
>> [ inaudible ]. [ laughter ]
>> that makes sense to me. I know the county attorney has been working on that. Your two representatives, the sheriff's office, three or four people from the sheriff's office attend the meetings and seem to know just a whole lot about their part of it. Pretrial services, we'd want to have them, right? And one or two other offices greatly affected would want to be on there. It may not be as simple as I think. In which case maybe 60 days is too short. But whatever budget issues we have for this budget cycle, we kind of need to know. The other thing that ought to be friendly is for you all of us to work together and get as much done as we can in 60 days. Because we will start working seriously on the '05 budget. How's that?
>> I love it. I appreciate y'all taking the initiative to get everybody together.
>> okay. Thank you.
>> we'll make it happen. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank y'all.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 28, 2004 9:46 AM