Travis County Commissioners Court
July 6, 2004
Item 7
Number 7, consider and take appropriate action on proposed personnel amendments.
>> is it possible to knock off what I would call the routine ones and then focus on the temporary pay increases for the departments?
>> okay.
>> if it's appropriate, I would move approval of all the routine items which is everything except page 5 on which deals with temporary pay increases for facilities and [inaudible].
>> second.
>> so the all or none t.n.r. Basically.
>> and [inaudible] because I think the same issues are going to come up about the large number of folks.
>> 1, 2, 3, 4. Any discussion of that motion? Picking up all of the routine pages 2, 3, 4. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. At one time there was like a recommendation for joe geiselman. Is that still in here?
>> yes, it's listed as a non-routine item on the cover. You mean the position itself? Executive manager position?
>> correct. Where is that?
>> item b. On your front page of the personnel amendment.
>> now, my position on that is as an executive manager, the executive manager [indiscernible] Commissioners court. So it would be inappropriate for a routine item to be initiated by a manager in a department, an executive manage their works directly for the five of us would be my explanation of pulling an executive manager. Having said that, I accept any motion on joe geiselman's salary.
>> I will second your motion.
>> my motion would be -- I'm thinking we should treat all of them -- we will treat all of them at the same time whether we treated them the same or not.
>> and the reality is that we're looking at pay increases for our own employees next year and all five of them can appropriately be handled at that time.
>> joe geiselman would come up at the same time the other executive managers and coordinators to the Commissioners court.
>> this fiscal year.
>> not this fiscal year, no. There is no money this fiscal year.
>> what would be happening, we would be bringing the information to you to the court on executive managers under the green circles report that we would be offering to you. That among the other items that we're to report back to you on under the compensation issues. So the executive managers would be a part of that because they are green circled and that's a different type action that's noted here, but they will be in that report.
>> motion is approve joe geiselman because is he an executive manager. Seconded by kpheug. Commissioner Gomez. Any more discussion?
>> I'm trying to remember when we dealt with executive manager based on what we used at that time to see if they would receive [indiscernible] their salaries. Right now I can't recall what time of the year that happened. Can you maybe help me on that?
>> and I'm -- from memory, I'm believing that it was probably when the 5% allocation was awarded towards the end of that particular fiscal year, which would have been -- that would have been -- I'm terrible on years, '04-'05. No, no. '03.
>> so they have not received anything in '04?
>> not in '04 and in addition to the executive managers, none of your other workforce has either because there was no compensation allocation for '04. And that's usually done around the end of the fiscal year when performance-related matters are being reviewed by the various managers and the court typically sets that time for the executive managers when that review is done.
>> so that doesn't preclude that we can't visit that before tend of '04 for all the executive managers if that's the case.
>> that's correct, but that's the court's decision to make.
>> knob got raise this is year -- knob got raises this year. There have been no raises. I think it's appropriate we would go through the evaluation process on our executive managers, but there is no money at the end of this rainbow. Hopefully October 1st there would be and my hope would be we would take care of our executive managers extraordinarily early in '05 so we can take care of matters quickly.
>> that's my last question. Thank you.
>> any more discussion on the motion to pull joe geiselman from the list? All in favor? Show Commissioners Sonleitner, Gomez and your truly -- Commissioner Davis abstains.
>> the other real routine which is I guess not listed as temporary pay is the t.n.r. On page 18, slot 1. That's green circled. Now, that is not -- beg pardon?
>> no, the slot 1 would -- that was taken care of in the action that you just took. So that's the executive manager position.
>> okay, so on 18 that's not two separate -- slot 1 and slot 376?
>> two different slots. So I'm asking about one. That's different than joe's, isn't it?
>> no, that is --
>> slot 1 --
>> that is joe's position, but as a result of the action that you just took, it excludes that now.
>> excludes 1 and 7 and 376.
>> only 1 it excludes base on the action you just took. 376 is item a under your non-routine item that's listed on the front.
>> okay, that's what I was asking about. 376 is different from the temporary pay.
>> no. It is a temporary pay request. But because that particular slot did receive a 5% adjustment within this fiscal year, the department is requesting an additional 2.9% under this particular item. The reason that it appears on -- as a non-routine item is because your policy indicated that employee would only be able to receive 5% within a given fiscal year. And that was awarded to this employee, the 5% by 376, was award odd February 3 of '04. This is an additional request that exceeds the policy limit and within the policy you had stated that we should bring any additional requests above 5% to the court, and that's why this item is on.
>> okay. This is on because we did 5% in February, but the request would be 2.9% more?
>> that's correct.
>> okay. I would ask basically for justification. Did I get those?
>> yes. It's attached as page --
>> for all of them.
>> -- 19 of your backup.
>> so that's justification for -- that's justification for page 6 through 17?
>> the request -- if request was -- this is under the item a under your non-routine items, the justification that h.r. Received is reflected on page 19. And that was the t.n.r. Position.
>> [inaudible]. > I want to say when we talked about this last week I thought t.n.r. Was going to get us some more information than what was provided initially, which is page 19, and I thought there was going to be a little bit more work about how it is that everybody either came under section a or d. I think it had to do with expectations of future fabulous performance and/or market. So I thought you all were going to do an update for us.
>> no, Commissioner, we're not going to do an update. We felt that the group as a whole for future expectations, the result was for expectations in the future. The idea of performance appraisals since we weren't -- this is not performance based pay, it was -- the fact that one expects one to perform over time and given opportunity to be able to better themselves. And the idea is that these folks will be able to perform exceptionally in the future. That's the hope. That's the plan.
>> and certainly we have performance evaluations from the past that are embedded either in their permanent score file or hopefully h.r., Wherever those things reside.
>> both places. We have the -- the final sheet is in h.r. And the actual documentation is in each individual's personnel file. What I would like to say, though, is what this represents is approximately -- what is it -- 70% -- 71% of t.n.r.'s workforce. What we have here is 39% -- 55% of our front line personnel that is correct includes our own maintenance, equipment, our techs, mechanics and [indiscernible] folks, represents about 55% of that. This represents 3.3% of our total salary allocation for just digs disand that included a little less now. This does not include any employee that was hired after January 1. Did not include any of the temporarys or the pops.
>> this is justification that -- [inaudible] received?
>> yes.
>> the county judge's request last week was interpreted as not being a request.
>> at the time we didn't know you had this. Our understanding, this was not in your backup. Linda provided this I thought later on. We provided this to linda and the backup we had initially from court didn't have this backup.
>> so justification basically is the expectation that in the future --
>> that's correct.
>> -- all the employees covered would perform better.
>> yes.
>> now, does that meet legal muster?
>> there is a certain standard of performance that is expected of an employee [inaudible]. If t.n.r. Has played out what -- laid out what the expectation would be above and beyond what they normally would expect and then at the end of that performance period they can establish that, yes indeed that employee did -- did perform as expected, then additional pay could be allowed under the state constitution.
>> but this isn't part of this policy. This -- the expectations is that one would perform exceptional in the future. Now, what is that? We do have what is performance. We have gone through performance management system. We have a system very similar to what linda is about to present to court. We go through and we have [indiscernible] by individuals as well as within each program element that matches and [indiscernible] up our total goals set initially by the kofrplt we have a mission and we work it down so even the maintenance tech knows exactly what his expectation -- his or her expectations are. So we have do that. We do a performance appraisal, as a matter of fact, we're doing that now. We're in the process of doing this last year performance appraisal from July through August. That's how we do our performance. And we've done that since i've been here.
>>
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>>
>> ...they may get a raise that's added to base. They may not get a raise added to base. There will be many a stopgap to keep reevaluating performance. I think your issue would be extraordinarily on point if this were being added to base because we would then say we have the expectation forever and we're going to pay you forever. On a weekly basis, but there is one time. And then it goes away.
>> what will be your standard of performance to be able to get that lump sum amount.
>> expectations of the future in terms of being a good performer. And all these folks I'm now seeing, we are not allowing folks that have been hired since January to be included in this group because they do not have that track record. But I can tell you from a friend i've got over at tnr, the evaluation process over there is quite rigorous. It is not simply a okay, check, check, check, you get your stuff. It's done for the individual, the team, the organization. There's a lot that goes into that evaluation. And many folks over there have gone through this for -- this for five, 10, 15 years' worth of evaluations and we know what kind of performers they're going to be because we've got the records imbedded in hr in terms of who these folks are and what kind of performers they've been in the past. And it's no surprise when they get raises in the future.
>> but if you can't base your salary of what someone is going to -- over this lump sum amount based on past performance --
>> I'm not. I'm not reporting past performance. It is recognizing what happened in the past as being a pretty good hunch that they are going to be or greater in the future.
>> when will you award the lump sum payment?
>> I think if it passes it will be in the next period, that's the point of a personnel amendment. It is no different than the other ones that we have also awarded throughout this fiscal year.
>> and that's for a whole department, though. This is almost 300. I remember 10 here, 12 there, 15 there, maybe as much as 20, which I understand. And I'm in it because initially when we did the temporary pay deal, it was not quite what I had in mind. The other deal is last week if there's justification there, let's do it, but the justification today seems a lot more trumped up than it did last week. What I expected was somebody to -- even if you pull categories of workers and say this is what they've done and here's what we expect them to do, and they're on the right track and we expect them to keep excelling, which is what joe said in this memo. But take that rationale and apply it to the whole department instead of the few that were pulled out in my view is not fair, sets the precedent and it's certainly not consistent with what I had in mind. The other thing is if we approved this one, I think that the other department with other savings will be coming to us basically asking us to approve them without documentation. We would not have put those three separate criteria in here if you did not expect them to be followed. And I don't know that we expect emergency rooms have spent a whole lot of time of documentation in the sense we expect at some time. And what I tried to indicate last week is what I thought the documentation was insufficient and I requested at least an additional effort. In the end I end up deferring to the manager's judgment anyway, but a collective judgment of about 300 people where you say basically the same thing is inconsistent with what tnr has done during the 15 years that i've been associated with my spoasht. Tnr doesn't function like that, except to get temporary pay for 300 employees. And I was looking for a way to support it last week. I'm in the same position, but I'm just one. Any more questions?
>> yes, judge --
>> let me kind of say a little bit. My brain cannot process future at this point the way we're defining it: and I look at the policy and it doesn't jibe for me. It just doesn't. And so I don't want policies to be taken out the original intent, and it just doesn't -- it's not common sense to me. It just doesn't. Doesn't make sense. So I'm not for this.
>> we are looking at five percent for each department. We're trying to budget five percent for what we call performance pay, but if you have expectations, we say you get this much. And about 100% of employees meet expectations, so they would get the threshold amount. And what I recommend is that instead of waiting until later in the summer, to allocate this five percent, the five percent for the department, we make it effective October 1. Any time after that point the department can do it. And if I were an employee, I would rather have my shot at five percent or six or seven if my performance exceeds expectation, then this amount right here. The other thing is that there's no reason, no requirement to wait until summer to do performance evaluations. Employees have been performing over the last two years, and there are no pay increases because we've not budgeted them. So in my view the employees would benefit financially much better if the department say between October and -- October 1 and October 30th and November 15th went ahead and did the performance eval weighings, allocated the five percent of whatever amount we had, they had more money, the department would have that done, and you would be basically evaluated on your performance not for 12 month, but for two years. I think that would be a better indication of the justification. I threw that out because it makes sense to me. And typically that is what we ask of the other departments, which is why I thought it made sense.
>> I'm hoping that they'll be here shortly.
>> I have a comment.
>> I had a comment before we get to there. And that is that I have every intent of supporting a motion related to the tnr items simply because these are our frontline performers who make us look good related to road and bridge, fleet and in our parks. And these are some of the folks that were most vocal when we turned over this courtroom to our employees to talk to us about what was going on with pay and insurance, and I don't want to wait until October to try and give a little bit of relief to some of the folks that are at the bottom end of our pay scale and work on behalf of this Commissioners court.
>> my turn?
>> yes, sir.
>> I think i've stated my position pretty elaborate and pretty -- last week as far as I feel about this. And I can recall very clearly in my mind how even in my department, it didn't have to be a number of persons there, but those that would like to have had that type of opportunity, they were award forwarded that. And especially -- afforded that. And especially if the department has the resources to allow for such an,. I would be climbing up against this wall if tnr or any other department would come in here and ask for such increase and there was no resources in there particular department to do it. The resources are there and maybe what we have to do is revisit the policy so everyone can get an understanding, because in my opinion it's not a matter of the numbers, per se, in other words, if it's the numbers, we should have said to the departments, well, you can only deal with five persons in your department. The most we could get on the deal is 20. In other words, there's going to be a cap, then the cap ought to be defined in the policy. But there's not a cap. And as such is the case, I stated pretty accurately I think the way I feel about this, so I'm going to support this. And with that i'd like to make a motion at this time that we support the tnr request on pages 6 through 17, and also slot 376, that we support that and those persons that work hard for this county, that this passes.
>> I have just one question I guess of christian. What if we continue with this and all salary savings are spent by departments that have them. What does that do to our balance in the budget later?
>> it decreases the ending fund balance accordingly. Every dollar out of the treasury for lump sum decreases ending fund balance. We have to predict what those amounts will be. I think you've already been advised that there will be other departments with many other employees coming forward to you with similar requests that will have similar justifications with similar issues before you. We already have them lined up and we are predicting, because we must, the impact on the ending fund balance. And even tnr may come forward with requests for transfers from allocated reserves for other issues that the department is facing.
>> recognize that all budget salary savings are already in the ending fund balance. We have met the budgeted salary savings in addition to over and above this.
>> what I'm talking about is we provide a projection for every department to the auditor about what will be spent and what won't be spent above and beyond salary savings. So I'm not suggesting you don't have it above and beyond, I'm suggesting that we must make a projection for all departments what the ending fund balance will be. And we realize what this policy means, we realize what the fiscal implications are, and as long as you're aware of what the fiscal implications are, it's a policy choice.
>> judge, I'm happy to second that motion.
>> that's seconded by Commissioner Sonleitner.
>> is it also possible -- if they want to pass this, they'll also say that it's effective immediately, then the policy is no longer in place? I just think that the county departments are not -- it's not their concern to balance the budget, it's ours. And that's what I'm concerned about, that we kind of, you know, try to balance the budget as we go along, anticipating what's coming up in the future, and when the policy is misread -- everybody will interpret it according to their needs, but it's this court's responsibility to balance the budget and to keep an eye on all those kind of expenditures. And hopefully the other one, the other responsibility we have is to not allow our policy to be misinterpreted.
>> I think we don't have anybody here with negative line items, and they've already met salary savings, and this is above and beyond that. Let's just say that department x says I want to do this, spend all this money. And now they're coming to us four weeks from now saying, look, we forgot one of our other line items and those are important, we spent all of our money and now we need to get it from the allocated reserve. It's quite a different thing. And this department is not going to be asking for money from the allocated reserve to cover something.
>> we may be asking Commissioners for fuel, general fund fuel, which is 50% of the sheriff's budget and 12% of the constable budget. However --
>> let's talk about that. Fuel, not for tnr vehicles, but primarily for the sheriff's office and for our vehicles. And the transfers -- (indiscernible). It is blatantly unfair for that department to have to suck up the cost of fuel to run our sheriff's vehicles. That's ridiculous. Sorry. [overlapping speakers]
>> all the different departments in order to take action on this particular one, which is continuing to add on to the miss interpretation of (indiscernible) [overlapping speakers]
>> ... It was in the '05 budget projection. You are well aware of what the fuel is and has been. We projected an increase last year. We got that. The increase was for 1.27 a gallon.
>> [overlapping speakers]
>> we're needing to start pulling that punish together and to ask those departments that are the ones with those vehicles to come up with their proportionate share of the problem and the pain. And a lot of those departments is more than 80-million-dollar budget.
>> just so you know, the landscape. There are other departments with centralized line items that will make similar observations. Purchasing has advertising. Facilities has got utilities. Records management has got -- a lot of departments have what these things are called line items. So they say, well, I'm managing it, but if it runs into trouble, you know, it's another department. And then there's truth to that, but in the end county-wide the money goes out the treasury, and that's really the question. Do you want it to go in with the treasury or not? And you can -- each individual who looks at that policy and looks at the request can land on a different place, but the bottom line is the answer to Commissioner Gomez's question is it affects the ending fund balance and will affect '05.
>> is there a county policy that would adversely affect these same employees' ability to get performance pay next year, assuming the court budgets it?
>> no.
>> okay. Any more discussion on the motion?
>> judge?
>> yes, sir.
>> well, I think the middle of this paragraph on page 19 basically says what tnr did with this thing. The value contributions that tnr expects from our employees enhances the reason it is necessary to encourage them to continue to do good work. Tnr continues to encourage its employees to raise the performance bar. We don't use words in the county like bonuses and things like this because, my god, these people get crazy over those kind of words. But really what we've done here is we've allowed the department to work within the guidelines of what we did set. I don't think that any of us thought that what would happen is that everybody is going to effectively get raises, so we're taking our savings and we're giving it to people because we know that people need the money and morale is low and all this kind of stuff. And we'll bank on somebody giving us -- finding a way to give us five percent, which is what I know that everybody is hoping for. I'm fully aware of what has taken place on this thing. It's just, you know, the executive manager of tnr has decided i've got the savings and I'm going to give it to the people. Now, do I see this will affect the bottom line dollarwise? Sure. And I think that it's going to open the floodgates of efb that's going to come in and do something like 19. But that is something that I think that we live with whenever we set the policy. I mean, sometimes when you think that you've set something that you don't think people are going to -- I mean, let's face it, there's a little taking advantage of what the deal is here. I mean, we all know that. We don't need to dance around it. And it's gotten everybody's attention because we know what's going to happen. But I think that we have got to get back to -- because where do these dollars come from? They come from savings what are savings? Savings are elite line items in all of this personnel budget with the intentions of never filling it, of never hiring. And those are savings all of a sudden. And that's not running good efficient county government, I don't think. I think that everybody deserves some monies to be as contingency to sit there, but when you're talking about some of the savings that we have in some departments with -- I'm always amazed at how we can come up with several hundred thousands of dollars -- we obviously have reserves where we get those dollars and those are for good reasons. But I think that we have got to really understand if we're really concerned about what the taxpayer has to pay, then we have got to learn within three hours of being with the county that zero base budgeting was nothing that anybody had any appetite for. But that's -- if you really want to get down to what does it take to run a department, what does it take to run an area of government, that's the only way you can do it. I don't think that I can get that accomplished, so I'm not willing to go there. But I don't have a problem with what tnr has done, but I understand what they've done. I mean, it's real easy. You know, we could dance around all the words and whatever we want, and this sheet basically basic is telling the court, you know, what -- we haven't given raises, our people are hutting, we've got savings, so we're sending it that way. Now, I think if we want to change it for the upcoming year, then we have to put a lot more teeth in what we have to put down in regards to I am big on performance-based pay. I think that you ought to be paid a commiserate amount of money if you really exceed expectations. But that is something that management has got to sit down and painstakingly get a criteria to say you've exceeded this. You have exceeded it. But as -- because no one wants to say I'm going to give that person a raise and I'm not going to give that person a raise. Everybody hates that. So what does management do in management just goes, who is going to be upset that their raise is not going to be as much as what they want. I'm just going to give everybody one. I don't think that we can continue to do that in the county. I think if we do, all we're going to do is build and build and build. So I'm -- I mean, I'm going to vote for it knowing what it's going to do, but I think that next year we're going to have to as a court really set up standards and performance measures and hold people accountable and management and department heads that you do documentation that says this is the reason you get this. And if it's not good, I will tell you that the next year I'm not going to be supportive of doing what I'm fixing to vote for.
>> well, Commissioner, the only thing is that there is a performance-based bay system in. And these employees who are on this list are anticipated to be performing well in the future, which means that if tnr evaluates these employees, they will be eligible for performance-based pay, which is what you addressed. And so -- but this -- to take the -- to allow the policies to be used to go -- to kind of jump the gun on this process and then affect the bottom line for the budget that we spent hours trying to balance, I don't think is -- gets what i've heard you say ever since you got on this court, that you want to save taxes and that you want to have a balanced budget. And I would really appeal to your compassion and reserve tism -- reserve tism to really -- conservatism to really make it fair for the taxpayers of this county and follow the policies appropriately and let the the process go through the way it's supposed to. And these employees, I promise you, if they perform well in the future, they will get a pay raise based on performance. But this is allowing an end run on a policy that was not intended to do this particular thing and that salary savings is supposed to fall to the bottom line, the ending fund balance. All the members of this court know that. I mean, I remember hearing it all the years that i've been going through this budget process. This is an end run. And I would really recommend that we -- if this gets passed that you would support an effort to put this policy on hold and let's stop the bleeding that's going to occur when we try to balance our budget.
>> Commissioner, if I were saying that we were going to take the ending fund balance from black to red, I absolutely would not do it. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about just decreasing it. And I don't think that we can arbitrarily say we're going to do that for tnr, but we're going to close the gate.
>> well, then you can really look for a tough budget process then.
>> I understand.
>> I'm not willing to do that. Maybe you're willing to do it, but I'm not.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? Show Commissioners Daugherty, Davis and Sonleitner voting in favor. Voting against, Commissioner Gomez and yours truly. The county judge. Discussion? All in favor? Show Commissioners Davis, Sonleitner, Daugherty and yours truly voting in favor. Voting against, Commissioner Gomez.
>> for the same reason.
>> thank you very much.
>> let's get them all in here.
>> thank you for working within the policy.
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Last Modified:
Friday, October 28, 2005 9:43 AM