Travis County Commissioners Court
July 20, 2004
Item 6
Number 6 is to consider and take appropriate action on budget amendment, transfers and discussion items.
>> this was the same question that I had last week that we didn't quite get to about the records management fee -- I mean I think this is out of budget amendment and transfers. I understand that we have a fee that was passed the last legislative session to generate dollars for the district clerk's office to do certain things. Now that we are going back and I don't know whether it's an its function or whether it's a district clerk's function, but we are being asked to take those dollars out of effectively general fund money versus being able to take the necessary dollars to do that job out of of this fund that has been created in the district clerk's office. Maybe somebody can clean that up for me.
>> can you talk about the special revenue fund?
>> yeah, the money that is on this request to be transferred from the its to the district clerk's office is for temporary salaries for work to be done in the -- for the e filing project. The e filing project is a project that involves district court, district clerk's office, its, I think those are the main three groups, departments that are involved in that, and there was a budget set up in the general fund. It's been like a three or four year project that has been ongoing. All the money was -- most of the money was pretty much budgeted in its and what happened is that now its has requested to move some of the funds over to the district clerk since the work is going to be done in the district clerk's office, felt that the supervision should be in the district clerk's office. The fund that you're speaking about is fund 055, a district clerk management fund, it was set up a couple of years -- I guess this year is the first year of the fund. There was revenue certified of $50,250 in that fund. Looks like they're going to get pretty close to meeting that revenue projection. No money has been spent out of that fund and michelle from the district clerk's office can tell you about what they're planning, what ideas they have for expenditure of the funds in the future.
>> I'm michelle from the district clerk's office. In going through the cms project and looking at the benefits that we anticipate coming from this project and we do think the first phase of it will be operational at the first of August, we've also realized that there's a compelling need to migrate this system into our criminal division. Currently there is no budget at all to expand the system into criminal case files. Our intent is to bank the money that we're talking about in the special fund to a point where I believe an f.y. '05 there will be sufficient funds in there to migrate this system into the criminal courts. This will make us incredibly more efficient in operating the district clerk's office as far as felony cases go. We have approximately 75,000 cases that are pulled and sent to courtrooms every year to await a hearing. With this system the labor that is involved in pulling and reshelfing those 75,000 files would go away because it makes the files readily available through the computer. I would also say that substantial amount of capital has been invested in this project for the scanning equipment that is needed to convert existing files and take new filings and scan them into the system. We think that the project, as far as scanning existing cases, will be done before the life span of that equipment will be up. So what we would then be able to do is transform the use of this equipment that still has some good mileage in it and use it for the criminal system and take advantage of the fact that you've already allocated those funds for this equipment. Without this bank of records management funds, you would then, if you would want to convert the criminal system into an imaging system as far as case files go, have to come up with some sort of general revenue money. We anticipate down the line the civil cases will start generating revenue because we would be able to provide some sort of fee-based access system to these records. I'm not sure that that is going to be feasible for the criminal cases, the chances of cost recovery are not there. So that would also make this particular fund really good use for the criminal division.
>> pbo agree that we need to take it out of what we have basically ear marked for it? Or does -- should it come out of this fund? I mean I understand, michelle, what you're saying. And it makes sense. That clears a lot up for me. You have a lot of things coming down the pipe that you can use that money for and that was the intent of getting it passed so you can have those dollars, so that clears up something for me.
>> both purposes are good government whether you use red money or green money.
>> red or green?
>> well, michelle's is red and the other is green.
>> are we scanning these files so we don't have to keep the hard copies?
>> we're scanning the files for several reasons. One is that it's a better way of maintaining the records so you can have simultaneous use of those records, whereas as long as they're on paper it's one copy only one user at a time. It reduces the space demand that we have, and you know about the courthouse space problem that we have when they're in digital form, and it's more efficient for us because we took the filetor record in the system and then we don't have to touch it anymore. It's available without our direct staff involvement, so from that perspective it really is going to be a veryct busines.
>> let me ask my question another way: so after we complete the scanning, what happens to the hard copy?
>> the hard copy is going to be shipped to off-site storage to be maintained for ar kiefl purposes but not kept here. It won't be used.
>> I was hoping we could avoid storage costs for the hard copy.
>> I think for archival regulations we do need to store it but it will not be accessed. The storage will be storage. We don't anticipate the fees that would come from movement of storage on a frequent basis which is something we experience right now.
>> the law requires various times for various documents, so do we monitor that and at the end of say required period, we remove those documents from storage?
>> we will remove them according to the state guidelines put out by the state library. It varies as to the type of disposition in the case and as to the type of case. That is another benefit actually we're getting from the cms system. We've set up the coding in it so that it will be able to tell us when it's time to destroy a record.
>> if the law requires ten years, after the ten-year period, we know what files we can basically discard, save storage cost scws.
>> with this newal system that we're putting in place, yes, we can.
>> when will we start spending down this $50,000 that we're going to have in this account?
>> we really anticipate with the way it continues to grow every month, in f.y. '05, hopefully in the first quarter or early second quarter of f.y. '05 there will be sufficient funds there to take a look at contracting for migrating this system into the criminal division. Our hopes right now, if everything goes well, is to have this operational in the criminal division in about a year.
>> I mean that is probably my biggest concern is if we're going to create -- if we're going to is legislatively have things done where we create funds to take care of need, then I would like for us to spend those -- it looks better to me. It's easier for me to be told you know what, we're going to spend that money next month versus stockpiling a number of dollars. It sounds to me you've got more than what we're going to be able to generate. That would be my only concern, I would like to see that spent.
>> Commissioner, we've had preliminary estimates to what it will cost to put this in in the criminal division based on the route of revenue coming in, my estimations on pretty much on target.
>> I move approval.
>> okay. Anymore discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
>> that included the add-on?
>> all of it.
>> that included all of number 6.
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Last Modified:
Friday, October 28, 2005 12:38 PM