Travis County Commssioners Court
May 25, 2004
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Item 22
Item 22 is to consider and take appropriate action for request on meals on wheels modification of the one to contract number ps 040105 ef order to lay requirement for background checks on certain volunteers.
>> good morning, judge.
>> good morning.
>> stan pruitt who is the executive director of meals on wheels, and within our social services contracts there is a requirement for the agencies to have background checks on the employees and volunteers. We had a request from meals on wheels to have them partially exempted from that requirement. The memo that I submitted to you and signed asking for a total waiver is inaccurate. What we're asking for is that meals on wheels be allowed to grandfather in volunteers that they had prior to October 2002, and also to lay requirements for special events requiring large groups, and van can actually explain the efficiency of helping the large groups and the requirement, the grandfathering in of 2002 volunteers, volunteers prior to 2002 actually has more efficiency and economical rationale too, but I'm going to let dan tell you about it.
>> the request is that the policy be applied prospectively from November 1 of 2002, after November 12002?
>> that's correct, judge.
>> all volunteers before that point would not have to...
>> judge and Commissioners, let me explain it to you, a couple of things to consider. We get a lot of volunteer groups that come in and I think this one is fairly easy. We may have a special event, united way day of caring, dell, some other corporation in town might have a hundred volunteers that might come out on a Saturday or fifty volunteers to cleanup somebody's house, their yard, help them out in different ways. The logistics of doing background checks when you don't know who is coming on Saturday morning is impossible. I don't know how we'd do it and if we had to we might as well stop those programs because we couldn't get those volunteers in and do the background check. The other thing I would like you to consider is meals on wheels we have about 3,000 volunteers and in October of 2002, we started background checks, we are doing them actively now and will continue them, but in order for us to make this retro active, we would have to go back to pre-october 2002 and identify about 2200 volunteers find them, get them in, some of them volunteer once a month, we will have to get them to sign the authorization to do the background check, incredibly cumbersome, time consuming, we don't have the staff and the finances to do that. It's extremely difficult for us to do it. Our volunteers play such an important role to delivering services to the elderly and disabled in our community, we would like to go ahead and not be required to do those background checks prior to October of 2002.
>> okay. So you have an opportunity to work out specific language to present to us?
>> we have.
>> go ahead.
>> I can read it to you. If you want to take the exhibit 1...
>> okay.
>> the change we'll make is in the first sentence where it says toward the end "current criminal indictment related to volunteers will add working for contractor prior to October 31, 2002, and volunteers working on one time special events requiring large numbers of volunteers.
>> and I think that really...
>> that's the gist.
>> ... Does it.
>> we'll get that changed document up to the judge's office today, but the rest of the document you've got will be ready.
>> up to November 1, 2002, there would be a background check.
>> we've been doing them, judge, since then and we will continue to do them of course. We just don't want to have to do the backlog.
>> okay. You'll get that to us later today?
>> yes.
>> move approval of this item with that change.
>> second.
>> anymore discussion?
>> do you want to look at it?
>> I saw the change.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you, I appreciate it.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
Last Modified: Friday, May 26, 2004 7:00 PM