Travis County Commissioners Court
September 21, 2004
Item 37
Number 37 is to consider and take appropriate action on request for a comprehensive
study on compensation for various categories of peace officers and I would
like to lay this out and hopefully we can take action next week and not today.
Summarize the ideas that I have as well as to sort of quickly write down various
questions under each category of peace officer. A lot of the questions are
the same or similar. And what I have in mind basically is for us to authorize
a comprehensive report starting a list of recommendations, hopefully, of aspects
of peace officer compensation, the four major categories, half 0 of them are
represented by an organized group. The other half is not. But what concerns
me is that during the budget process and most of the time toward the end of
it, most of them bring us the results of substantial study on their part.
And also it's really too late for us to give it serious consideration, and
my intention here is for us to authorize that we commence this next year very
early in the fiscal year with an eye toward receiving specific recommendations
I would say early summer. There are numerous steps that you normally would
not have just by doing a market salary survey and I do think we ought to give
the various groups an opportunity to revise their input and I can recall really
I guess what documents from them pretty much every year for the last three
or four years, and what we ought to ask them to do is get that information
as much as possible to give them a deadline for that, and my thinking is that
they will submit that information to our human resources department, we will
try to do as much of that work in house, but I知 firmly of the opinion that
at some point we really need an independent outside expert to come in and
take that data and give us recommendations, and I believe the rumor for that
is this year specialized area, number one, an number two [inaudible] same
objectivity as an outside expert. The problem of using an outside expert is
that you're talking about cost, and I just -- I estimated 25 to $50,000 thinking
that if we followed the model that we use for the operations study, I think
it was big, and make this effort a little bigger than it would be otherwise
is that you're talking about sort of four distinct professional categories
instead of just one, I think it will be bigger than usual but I think it should
be a lot smaller than the jail operation study. The other thing is that I
think that this will involve quite a bit of analysis once we have pulled together
the facts. The other thing is that historically we routinely contact the other
urban counties, see how they treat different folks, I only hoping that we
can be a little bit more systematic in gathering that information and maybe
get their reasoning for some of the actions that they have taken, some of
the decisions that they have made, so in addition to getting the facts that
we kind of get the benefit of their thinking. But there is nothing magic about
these ideas of the I mean I put these together rather hurriedly. I've organized
it for the last six months. What is clear we ought to go in this direction
and based on the 2 or 3 meetings where we discussed peace officer compensation
it's clear that we collectively agonized over...
>> judge, I think this is a really a great place to start
and I hope that you'll also allow us to add a few more questions and areas
to go into because I -- i've got a few I would like to add to this myself
in terms of some more questions, and I think the one that really struck me
is how do we instill accountability into the system? I think there's been
a great deal of frustration by at least some of us on this Commissioner's
court that when you have things like lawsuits, that seem to tie back to decision
making, training, lack of -- performance -- i'll call them performance issues,
how do we get accountability built back into the system? How do we get...
Is it even possible to get performance appraisals put back into to system,
because folks on the top scale will get a raise regardless of what their performance
was that particular individual year, whereas other one who is nonpops has
to go through an appraisal process to get the minimums or to be granted compelling.
Is that even possible? And is there an alternative to a pops-like scale? We've
certainly seen at least one member of the family, constable two, get off the
pops scale, and I would like to know, you know, what their experience has
been the two years they've been off the pops scale about whether accountability
and personal, professional performance appraisals have helped or whether they
want to go back on the pops scale. And I think the other biggest frustration
for me is we always seem to be doing year-to-year, and is there any way to
be looking out beyond just that one fiscal year in terms of a more of a long-term
view of where we're trying to take the organization as opposed to here we
are at this particular moment and we can only see what's in front of us when
a lot of the decisions being made at other places, for example, atd, they
know what the outlook is for two, three years out, and I think we need to
know what that two, three out is if a lot of our decisions seem to be based
on staying within a certain striking distance of atd, we need to see the longer
view as well as what is in front of us for any given fiscal year. So there's
just a few of the other things to throw into the equation, but I think you've
got a great lift here and again, accountability, performance appraisals, is
there -- are there organizations without this kind of scale and getting more
of a long-term view as to what the costs are of this scale as opposed to the
crisis of the moment.
>> what I want is to have available to me with this process
is to gather information so that we can determine if there needs to be a change
in the way we approach this. And let's not say that, well, you know, the independent
contractor is going to come in and they're going to say such and such and
we're going to follow that by gum, you know, to me it makes a lot more sense
to have it as information gathering. We combine all of the information that
we have with cuc, the independent contractor, our own experience here, and
with constable two, as well, and let's then make a decision that works for
this community, because that's what we're going to wind up doing anyway, and
gather all the information from everybody else to see what we -- what makes
sense for us for next year and on out.
>> sure. Judge, I have no objections with this direction
that you putting forth to her today. I just want to ensure whatever we do,
we try to achieve a challenge, accept a challenge, as far as bringing along
parody within law enforcement and corrections that has been a challenge for
this budget year is how do we adjust the priority issues within the sheriff's
department and of course there are others, people on separate pops scale other
than the nonsheriff persons, I think going in the direction, I don't know
what is on the other side, but I want to make sure that whatever the results
are, whatever the finding, if we decide to do this at all, I want to make
sure how do you achieve parody, how do we get to parody within the department,
so that is still a challenge, so that would be my concern about this process.
So thank you.
>> [indiscernible] three to five years rather than dealing
with every budget cycle?
>> yeah.
>> now, do say on the second page of my little memo, attached
is a series of questions that will facilitate our information gathering and
review and analysis. Feel free to notify or develop your own. I do think we
ought to look at this next week and take action. That way, whatever we plan
to do we can hit the ground running in early October. My recommendation would
be the first thing would be to notify all of the peace officers, especially
organized groups and ask them to put together whatever their documentation
is, revise it, [indiscernible] I don't know whether they need 30 days or 60
days, but would have to have a draft schedule that we plan to follow to make
it clear that we want recommendations before us I would say early rather than
in the middle of the budget process. So if we can get it like may or June,
give us the best opportunity to reflect on it and respond during the budget
process.
>> okay.
>> I would hope that we would also include those one group
of employees who are peace officers who are not on the pops scale. I would
like to get the input specifically and invite constable to be a part of this
process as well. Because when he made the switch over, we said you cannot
flip back and forth, back and forth, but I think he's been on it enough years
to know whether this is something he wants to get back on or not. I think
his input would be invaluable considering he's not been on the pops scale
and has peace officers working for him.
>> okay.
>> judge, just to kind of keep everything kind of related
to Travis County, I would like to have hr be involved in this to kind of add
a balance, you know, to all of the information that is being gathered. And
like I said ultimately it's going to come down to us making a decision that
make sense for Travis County and the taxpayers here.
>> they can be very helpful in terms of contacting other
hr's in order to get pay scale. Sometimes they can cut through a lot of red
tape in terms of getting things within the community, the hr community.
>> yeah.
>> yes, sir?
>> since I have made mention during all of the budget time
with all of the pops scale an everything that I was really interested in this
because i, too, witnessed the frustration with all the different people coming
at me, I mean this is something that I am especially interested in seeing.
Although I will say this: I don't think the answers are always from consultants.
I can remember the day when we had the sheriff and six or seven of her people
in the room and we were talking about $250,000 to do a study with the sheriff
that is a paid consultant that was always kind of amazing to me that we're
paying for a consultant to come in and tell us how to do what we need to do,
and as far as parody, parody is real simple, it's just money, that's how you
get parody, you've got to come up with the dough to do it. Given we've got
a thousand people over there, and assuming that the reason that parity is
not there is because there weren't enough dollars to take and bring a thousand
people along versus x amount of people along, you know, the money issue is
the simplest of it. I mean it just depends on whether you're willing to bite
the bullet and to appropriate the money to bring people into parity. But I
really am interested in having people within our law enforcement agencies
and all the caveats of law enforcement to come to the table and say, you know
what, we are all in this together. I don't really care what tarrant county
is doing. Because we're different from tarrant county. I mean we've got a
different situation. It costs more to live in Austin, Texas, than it does
in fort worth. I mean, you know, those are the things that drive so much of
the decision that we have to make in this community. I think -- I mean it's
easy for me to sit and look at our law enforcement people eye to eye and say
there is a limit on what we can pay in order to -- for any of the jobs, and
that is really what we're up against unless, of course, we don't care how
we set the tax rate. I think all of us will always be concerned about that.
So I mean I知 always entertained when I get off out in the public and I知
-- I find myself with two or three law enforcement folks and they can bring
up four or five things to me that why don't we do these things and I知 like,
well, that sounds pretty practical, why aren't we doing those things, and
these are people that we have working for us that could sit down at a table
and say, you know what, I mean people may think that we are going to protect
our turf, but -- and that is not to say that we don't need a facilitator or
somebody that knows more about how to ask the right questions of law enforcement.
That is where I知 at a loss. If I get a detective that comes in, for example,
the da's office, I don't know enough about what I need to be asking them to
get to a spot where I知 comfortable making a decision. And so unless -- now,
I don't know if that's a consultant, I would think that maybe the sheriff
-- I mean I know one thing, we've got a person that works in the sheriff's
department that was the sheriff and that has worked for the tabc, and has
had, you know, tons of years of experience, so before I just say, you know,
I this think we ought to appropriate 25, $50,000 to bring somebody in to tell
us how to do this, I would hope that we would give some real thought to finding
out how we would still down with different folks within our grasp and that
work for us and say what are the real issues and -- now, maybe I will find
in a short -- in a real short meeting that that is not possible. But I think
your idea what about you're going to do is rite on line. I just hope that
before we go and say, okay, before we run out here and get a consultant to
come in here and say here is the blueprint, if y'all do this, then this is
going to be aboutplegicable to you, because I知 afraid that might not be the
case, but I知 looking forward to working with this process.
>> another issue that is out there is the whole idea of flexibility
versus inflectionability, and I think that -- inflectionability. -- it was
more important for him to have the flexibility to be able to hire people in
with a pay range as oppose to the the inflexibility that went with pops. That
was a judgment call for that particular person to say he wanted to be able
to have performance and to have flexibility on hiring decisions and promoting
decisions within the scale as opposed to the very inflexible nature of pops,
even though it means you get automatic raises here and folks over here may
be told, well, you did well, but others did more, and therefore the person
who did more is going to get more than somebody who did a good job but did
not excel I think flexibility versus inflexibility of the pops scale is another
question to add on there. Judge, would you like those reduced to writing?
>> hand those to the next captain.
>> you bet.
>> [indiscernible] Biscoe to put aside his expertise in peace
officer compensation until we receive a report and hopefully rather than listening
to five or six distinct groups, each of which comes in with a long list of
recommendation, and each of them makes all the sense in the world, and when
they leave my office, most of the time, I知 amazed that I missed the thousand
points that are made while on there. The impression, though, that this is
becoming a specialized area. And in my memo I知 careful to point out that
we do the information gathering, summary analysis, then we contract out for
appropriate expertise. If the appropriate expertise is not out there, I知
thinking we will have a lot more to guess on and we will start our guessing
early rather than in the last month, so that is my thinking. The other thing,
though, is that economic all to reduce to writing its ideas, recommendations,
et cetera, and ought to basically approve a strategy and schedule. And what
else? And next contacted ought to be if somebody has questions for us to answer,
otherwise we ought to personally wait for the report to get here. Now, what
I have is to ear mark it, if decide that in fact don't need the outside expertise,
haven't spent the money. I知 talking about up against allocated reserve and
that kind of pull, by the way.
>> okay.
>> so, but actually looking for next week, I知 also hoping
that we can hand something to somebody.
>> okay.
>> I think the whole court ought to be together on [indiscernible]
the Commissioner's court.
>> okay. We want apples to apples comparisons. If we want
to say compare Travis County to some other county, then it ought to be --
and i'll put this in writing -- that it ought to be not only population but
cost of living so that you have a better idea of why we're comparing ourselves
to another county. I'll put in it writing.
>> [indiscernible] any idea except [inaudible] will be welcome.
Hear me out.
>> [inaudible]
>> yes, ma'am. The county departments?
>> yes, ma'am.
>> great.
>> so you'll have this back on? Questions?
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Last Modified: Thursday, October 27, 2005 9:41 AM