Travis County Commissioners Court
July 19, 2005
Items 12 & 13
Number 12 is to consider and take appropriate action on presentation of alternative strategies and recommendations on new jail construction. And 13 is to receive report from citizens bond advisory committee regarding the fy 2005 proposed bond program. Number 13 was for us to receive the report today with the understanding that it would be back on the agenda next week in the event that there's action that we need to take. Okay? And number 12 I think mr. Martin has some ideas to share with us?
>> judge, before steve begins his presentation, i'd like for him to spend a couple of minutes. I know it's always a little uncomfortable talking about yourself, but I think that it's really important for everybody to know who each and every one of the board members are. And I know we've gotten information, all of us got that information early on, but I think especially since we're on tv and we have an audience today that it would be real important for everybody to understand in particular who steve martin is and what his background is. So steve, I know you did a little bit of this at dinner the other night, so if you could maybe in a minute or two why don't you tell us who you are, what you've done, where you come from and some statistics that I think would be pertinent.
>> yes, sir.
>>
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
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>> ...it heartens me that this is true democracy at the grass roots level. And I appreciate you, Commissioner, giving me the opportunity to participate in that. It's really a wonderful opportunity to do it in a way that we can maybe literally impact and provide the court with hopefully quality information that you would use in your deliberations and I appreciate the opportunity to do that. We approach this project in a manner that if we did not -- well, I知 sorry, you wanted me to comment a little bit on my background.
>> I thought maybe you were going to have a different segue into it. Before I started --
>> I appreciate it. I知 a career corrections professional. I have worked in the field of correctional litigation, correctional management, criminal justice for 34 years, basically my entire adult life. I have started as a prison guard in the Texas prison system and have worked in a variety of positions over the years, including the general counsel of the Texas prison system. I've worked as a special assistant attorney general advising the attorney general's office on prison in jail matters. I do a good deal of work presently for the u.s. Department of justice civil rights division. And investigating cripa cases, cases in allegations of violation of civil rights and oftentimes tasks of going into institutions, jails, prisons, juvenile facilities to investigate those claims, oftentimes I知 also asked to monitor remedial -- remediation of those claims. I also work a good bit for federal judges in monitoring prison and jail conditions, crowding conditions, cases, other conditions cases in which remedial relief has been granted and there is a plan to correct deficiencies that I monitor that for federal judges and report the progress of that remediation. I also oftentimes am asked to mediate disputes between the parties when there's a disagreement on what should or should not be done. I also work as -- as an independent court appear ed expert for the federal courts in which I stand as a neutral party and answer strictly to the court, again on jail and prison litigation matters. I do a good bit of consulting to governmental entities across the country, outside of the country. I do a good bit of testifying work, both for plaintiffs and defendants. I have probably been involved in cases in over 40 of the 50 u.s. States over the years. And -- including foreign jurisdictions like jamaica, puerto rico, guam, tiapan, orthern ireland. I have done this, quite a bit of this work. I will probably make reference in my presentation. I have worked for 45 or 50 of the largest jails in the u.s. I知 not unfamiliar with large metropolitan facilities. I have worked cases from l.a. County to new york city to detroit in the north to baker county in the south and parts in between. And Travis County detention operation is most certainly a metropolitan jail operation. It is, I believe, mr. Bailey, it's one of the largest 50 I think maybe in the top 30. So we are talking -- i'll be making some references to metropolitan jail operations in Travis County certainly -- and Travis County certainly falls within that category. Commissioner does that suffice? Okay. What -- what we attempted to do in our deliberations and I see my co-committee members there, we very early on I think chose not to question the capacity need of the jail, that is to say they requested x number of beds. I believe 1688 beds was their request. While I believe with more study and more time, I would likely, speaking for myself, not for my subcommittee members, I would probably have questioned that request. But it wasn't -- we weren't in a position to do that from a timely standpoint, plus I believe we had -- that allowed us to -- to look at options of achieving that capacity rather than questioning the capacity itself. So that's what we attempted to -- I think that it's important to note, we did not question their capacity needs. We took those as valid. What we did do, what we attempted to do was basically to see if there were more cost effective, more efficient ways to achieve that capacity than simply building 1688 Wednesday at 40 to $45,000 a pop. We can all do the math on it. A prison jail bed and in temporary terms in metropolitan settings, that's an expensive proposition. So if there is a valid way in which we can achieve capacity without constructing, hard construction, of a jail bed, then we believed it was incumbent on us to explore that and explore it vigorously and diligently, I can attest that that's my -- my subcommittee did that. So that's kind of the working premise. We do not present our recommendations as -- as 100% correct. We present our recommendations to be questioned and evaluated both by jail staff, having seen them in -- I知 sure by the Commissioners court. We do have a -- as I phrased in my report or in our report, I believe they are guardedly viable options that we have presented, but they certainly need to be tested. They need to be critiqued, and you know we viewed vigorously, which I知 sure the appropriate Travis County staff will do. What I would like to do is just move straight away into our rationale on the specific recommendations. The first category of beds that I believe we -- we've fairly quickly arrived at a pretty firm consensus among the subcommittee. The replacement beds. Those -- those beds that the jail officials want to take off line primarily because they are flawed facilities and have limited useful life. What we did, we of course made site visits to the del valle complex. I have made two. I believe all of the committee members made at least one. And the committee, the subcommittee members hopefully had to -- had to frame it as a benefit of my earlier visit and I kind of channeled them to take a special look-see here, take a special look-see here, I gave them my appraisal of particular facilities that I thought had potential to remain online for some time, so I -- they had that hopefully benefit when they went. We found three separate existing buildings that we recommended be -- remain in use and remain in use for some number of years. That number of years would be determined by a number of factors, one of which would be do we need to do additional retrofiting to make them useful. But bottom line is that those three buildings have useful life and are currently being used to safely manage inmates and that the physical plants are of a quality that would merit some number of years of future use and the combined capacity of those three buildings is 336 beds. Now, if you multiply 336 times the average cost of 40,000, we are talking about millions and millions of dollars just on this one -- one issue. Now, this -- this assessment of the subcommittees was not rendered independently by us. We believe we had core rob tion of our assessment, but an earlier study that was done in August of 2004 I believe or April of 2004, I stand corrected, the jail operations study did a physical plant assessment of which I would rather suspect you folks have reviewed hopefully you have reviewed. And they -- they arrived at what they call a building summary matrix where they just numerically rated the useful life of these buildings. Primarily the replacement buildings. The three buildings that we selected, two of the three buildings fared well on that matrix relatively speaking. One thing I want to be very clear in the record here. While they were given a poor rating, it was what I call on the bubble. They -- the buildings 9 and 10 came in around 67, 68 or 69, and they -- had they arrived at 70, that would have been a fair rating. But the thing that needs to be pointed out is the variables on which they arrived at their -- at their ratings of these buildings, the structural variables for 9 and 10 were all 7's. That means they were fair. The structure is fair. The items on which they received 6's were other issues. Other than structural issues. So I -- we looked at those buildings as having been rated structurally as fair.
>> what are some of the other issues, though.
>> of those buildings?
>> right. Okay, I got the structure part, but other issues fair, what are some of the other issues, examples of other issues?
>> on these particular buildings?
>> right. One is age, they were -- they gave a numerical rating to age.
>> okay.
>> operations and upgrades. The structural variables that I referred to, judge, are interior, exterior, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, electronics, structural. Those are what I referred to as the physical plant.
>> okay.
>> structural attributes. And if those ranked fair, that -- that information combined with our assessment of those buildings, we just don't believe they should be bulldozed down.
>> okay.
>> so that's the basically the replacement beds.
>> so 9, 10 and 210.
>> > yes, 210 was not rated on the matrix because it was under -- it was being refurbished, being made better, I don't know in specific detail how expensive that refurbishment was, but if we invented some number of dollars recently in upgrading that building and then our site visit suggested that it is a -- a functional building, then again we did not believe we wanted to embrace a plan that would again bulldoze those buildings down. Quite frankly quong the citizens of Travis County would countenance that, that's my individual view, I don't want to speak for my subcommittee members on that. So those are the replacement beds. Variance beds, oh, my heaven, we had a lot of discussion of variance beds, you will note in our report that we basically supported the beds to eliminate the variances, but you will I think likewise note that we did it with a reservation. I believe firmly that if a varied, formal assessment was made and a plan developed, that some number of those variance beds can be used on a longer term basis and a functional or constitute functional bed space in that while -- while technically they are in the variance category and we need to either eliminate them as the jail officials want to do or develop some plan to use some number of them, I believe that -- I would urge the Commissioners court to call on that to be done. That a formal look-see be made and -- because the beds fall in several different categories, I don't want to get real, you know, technical here. But some of the cells are simply lacking in square footage to meet the jail commission standards so you would have to expand those cells, which is probably cost prohibit active.
>> let me -- prohibitive.
>> let me ask this question. On the look-see on the variance beds, things that you brought up earlier, the look-see, what would be the time component to actually willing through --
>> I didn't hear the last part of that.
>> on the look-see, you said there will probably be a need to see look-see on some of the beds stuff like that. How long would that probably take --
>> to make some assessment, probably arrive at a plan that could be presented to the jail commission, I would -- you've got extremely capable, mileageable folks in this jail. I believe it probably could be done in some time period of 60 to 90 days. Once you set kind of the structure of what I want to do. Truly they are indeed variance beds and cannot be retrofitted, corrected because they are too small. You take those off. But then there's the category of beds that could be used with some level of retrofitting. That is to say the expansion of space, addition of showers, sinks, et cetera, to come into compliance with the -- again the -- you know, the -- the jail commission ratio. That's a category. Then there's a third category of those -- some number of beds that are right on the margin of meeting the space requirements of the jail commission and they have attributes that will lend themselves to functionality. In building 1 you have a number of what are called open faced cells. They have no doors on the front of them. The square footage of those cells is close to being in compliance, technical compliance with the jail commission standards. I've got to believe if the -- if the Travis County people put together a very sound from a correctional standpoint, sound correctional plan of how they are going to utilize those and utilize them for limited numbers of inmates, not double cell all of them, but identify what number can be double celled and you know the type of inmates that are going to be placed in there and possibly as I say, this is going to wind back in to the flex beds because as you see we -- we were -- we rejected that -- that recommendation. One of the reasons we did is we believed that some number of the variance beds could at least be used in a contingency, emergency crowding or as flex beds. Again, a plan would -- would -- could be done that would provide for that. Until that's done, something like that is done, we did not want to embrace the 228 flex beds because we believe there is basically under utilized bed space in that facility that while -- while a lot of it is technically not in compliance with the jail commission, that I would nonetheless or I would not concede all 572 beds at $40,000 a pop. It seems to me that it would at least merit 30, 60, 90 day study by the officials to see what number of those beds could be used and how they could be used and under what circumstances. One other comment to make on this -- on this issue, once you construct all 572 beds and all of the replacement beds that have been -- have been requested, my calculations, they are not precise because again i've had limited time, limited information, but I知 fairly confident in saying, wonderful half of the jail population in Travis County will be in single cells. Now, Commissioners, I am extremely familiar with metropolitan jail operations in america. As I said, i've been in hundreds and hundreds of jails, 25 of the 50 largest. I know of no metropolitan jail operation, zero, that enjoys a level of single celling comparable to what we will have if -- if we bring all of those beds online. That tells me, that's a public policy, philosophical issue that you folks can make. The reality of it is it would be considered quite a luxury to operate a metropolitan jail with a 50% single cell capacity. I just wanted you to know that so in your deliberations. Secondly, it suggests to me that there is bed space that is available. And that some of those single cells that could be deployed in limited circumstances certain situations. That's again why we did not embrace the 228 beds. One other issue, that I think needs to be brought to your attention, that directly impacts this, it's my belief that the current inmate classification system gives too much weight to certain variables that are causing inmates to be overclassified. Overclassification results in the utilization needlessly of more specific bed space, more people classified medium and max, that's the $45,000 bed space. You need to have a classification scheme that correctly identifies your max inmates. And that you are not -- that -- that there's max in this business in inmate classification, that you house the inmake it in the least restrictive manner possible, both from a correctional management standpoint and a cost standpoint. Lower classification is less expensive. Of course if you don't need to put an inmate in a cell and you can put him in a dorm, from a management standpoint that's what you want to do. It's my belief that the -- that there is -- there's a possibility, not -- probability that we are over classifying inmates. That's not an independent belief. Corroborated by two other studies, again the jail operation study so to which I earlier referred, August 2004, page 17, let me quote from that. These data suggest that the tcso classification system does not create statistically valid and distinct custody levels for either the male or female prisoners. They move on into the recommendations to -- to suggest, number one, factor number one in their recommendations, undertaken a comprehensive revalidation of the classification system. All objective classification systems should be revalidated at least every five years to assure the process and classification items, weight and definitions are valid for the current pop plailtion, the tcso system has not been revalidated since its implementation. The revalidation process should at a minimum including the following tasks, sets that out. In a more recent study again the top recommendation, this is dated December 2004, presented in June '05, recommendation to sheriff -- the sheriff should initiate a revalidation, refinement of the classification system to ensure the process and its related instruments are accurately and reliably classifying inmates and taking into account the most pertinent and reliable information available. I urge you to require your jail management command staff to -- to begin that revalidation effort that was recommended some time ago. I cannot stress how important that is from a cost savings standpoint and also from a -- from a -- from managing the detainees in the proper way. Again, with this overclassifying, getting them in more expensive bed space and et cetera. So I don't know what the status of these recommendations are. With the jail. But let me assume for a moment that they have not embark odd that project as evidenced -- embarked on that project as evidence I by this most recent report it's certainly implicit that they haven't, that that get started. That could -- you know, our -- I cautiously stress could directly result in -- in a management scheme that -- that basically gives you beds. Or less expensive beds. And to the extent that we can build less expensive beds, is the extent to which we save money. One final comment, I will take questions if you have them, if you look at the recent, i've been hearing quite a bit in the paper, working in this project of the -- of the increased numbers in our population and that is -- that is disturbing, no question about that. I don't want to at all suggest otherwise. But I -- somewhere I had the impression that we were getting an influx of serious hardened offenders. And that -- in terms of bed days, that -- I mean: well, I don't want to say that may be, because numbers don't suggest that. But I did look at some intake numbers over fy '04 over fy '05 up to may and June by category, misdemeanants, felons, so forth, the overwhelming increase of intakes, not talking about detainees once the felon is in, he takes a lot of bed days, I知 talking about just intakes are overwhelmingly misdemeanant for these time periods. That's a fungible population, it leads itself, it is amenable to management alternatives. If you have a first degree felon, you have to put him in a secure prison bed. No won argues with that. You have to put him in a cell that accommodates that. But if you have, you know, class b misdemeanants coming in in large numbers, I assume a lot of those are being turned over fairly quickly, I don't want what the average bed days are, but somebody ought to be looking at what the bed days are for those folks. To the extent that there are five, seven days, two weeks, three weeks, whatever, whatever that is, let's say it's out there too far, knowing that those people are going to be released. When I say it's fungible, we can do things without compromising the safety of the community to a significant degree. It tells me there are factors at play here that I think need to be explored further. Fleshed out and some data looked at that lends itself to some serious public policy decisions on your part other than building 1680 beds at $40,000 a pop. Every alternative or everything that we can do to mitigate that need for hard space are sheer literal dollars saved that can be spent by my fellow or -- folded into their recommendations to you on parks, roads, other things. I just don't want to be a party to building a $40,000 prison bed or jail bed that isn't essential when I have enough understanding of what the other subcommittees are doing that they are -- there are dire needs out there for drainage, parks, open space so forth that our subcommittee said we want to make every dollar available that the jail needs, but only where it is essential and efficiently spent because every dollar we save here is a dollar that can be channeled over to those other two or folded into the recommendations of the subcommittees and in turn on to you folks. That's basically my presentation.
>> well, I want to say thank you so much for serving on the committee. I always thought that bringing citizens in to help us try to see what it is that we are -- that we need to work on is a good thing. So I want to tell you how much I appreciate your time as well as other citizens who have served on this committee. The other thing that I don't want to happen is for people to over react to the comments that are made because I think it's essential that we have different views when we want to look at issues that we need to resolve. And in this particular case, it's the use of taxpayer money in order to still address what we hear every day, that is that people want to be safe in their streets, in their homes, in the schools. But we want to do it in such a way that it's beneficial to them not only in safety, but in terms of financial issues. The other thing that you said that was really good to hear is that we need to evaluate our processes. Every five years is a good deal. I know that people fall apart when you ask, ask us ourselves to even look at processes that we have had in place 20, 25 years. So I知 very, very glad to hear you say that. That that's essential. And so -- so I welcome your report and I would ask staff as well to work with us in trying to come up with some good dialogue, let's not overreact. Let's look at this information as carefully as we can. And to remember that we are all working for the taxpayers. So we need to have these reports and we need to have some very -- very frank discussions about how it is that we are going to continue serving the citizens of Travis County. So I thank you so much.
>> well, it has been a pleasure. An opportunity to do -- that -- that I hope -- that I hope in working with my more than able cbac members that we have filled that mission and it's been a sheer pleasure and I -- I echo your comments not to -- for folks not to overreact. Simply this is a clarion call as it were to revisit some issues, maybe with some fresh eye that's we have brought to -- which I think is the way the process is supposed to work. That's why you have these citizens that can bring these fresh perspectives and new ideas and have a forum in which we can candidly articulate, then I think that's what we have done as a committee as a whole. I can assure you as a subcommittee, so thank you.
>> exactly. And expertise that you bring to the table that maybe some of us don't have. But I think the interest of serving the public is there. It's something that we all share. But the other thing is that the citizen, the reason I supported citizens bond committees in the past and will continue is that it's part of the democratic process. Thank you so much for mentioning that, especially since we just passed the July 4th celebration, that, too, is something --
>> I had some reservations about making that comment because it might appear trite and I thought that is probably the least trite thing that I would say every day.
>> I have been uncharacteristically quiet because I joined Gerald and steve last week at dinner, I can tell you that we had a very long and vigorous, perhaps the word loud might also be use understand the discussion. It had its moments [laughter]
>> if I had known steve was buying, I would have been there myself.
>> he wasn't, Gerald was, but I hit him up.
>> the benefit of the doubt, judge.
>> but what I came away from, you know, if terms of the end point of that whole discussion is that steve has raised some very interesting questions that I can't say with 100% certainty that I know what the answer is. And if indeed he is correct, we are talking about something that could be a very serious swing in terms of capital costs on a jail program unlike any other we have ever had here in Travis County dedicated to simply correctional facilities. They are valid questions to ask. I join Margaret in saying we cannot be afraid to ask these questions and worry that we are going to hurt people's feelings, that somehow we are questioning their management skills. We are not. We have got to be alto ask these questions -- we've got to be able to ask these questions in a protective, loving way, because they are serious questions we have got to get the answer to. I know that I have been trying to drill down through these numbers, steve is doing it from a different perspective. One of the things that has happened between last Thursday and today. Over the weekend there was a very long article, I think I sent it to all of you all here and a few others, related to the situation going on down in harris county where we think we have got issues, they have got 1300 inmates on mattresses on the floor. What is coming out of that, largest county in the state of Texas is having issues, is some hard questions are being asked by yet another large urban county about jail standards and rigidity of some of their rules and the need and desire by large urban counties to simply ask and not presume that the answer is going to be no. Especially -- especially when if you were to ask this question over the state capitol and does the lovely Texas department of criminal justice go by jail standards. No. These are rules that are being overlaid by 254 counties and the state of Texas is not going through this the same lovely process. So we may have some other allies there of simply saying it is worthwhile to ask, the v word, variance word should not be, thousand shall not, it is worthy of asking -- thou shall not. I think it is worthy of asking. Since we have set deadlines of going to the voters, I think steve is saying we have a really narrow window here to do a little time out and to ask these questions and to work closer with jail standards and not to presume the answer is going to be no because we don't even have -- we don't even ask. So I came away from last week's meeting knowing that steve has got some serious questions, he's got the resume that demands respect and I was pleased to see you quoted in the beautiful profile of harry weddington over the weekend, just reinforces steve's credentials, I hope that his questions and any questions that we all raise will be respected for what they are and that is that we have got to be able to to, without question, present information to the voters that we can stand behind and can guarantee that every question and everybody due diligence that was necessary indeed happened and this is the number. That it ought to be.
>> okay.
>> Commissioner, if I could, I would just so heartily reenforce everything that you just said, embrace it as enthusiastically as I can. I would add one single thing, basically kind of a follow-up on what you have said. The jail commission rules provide and set out a mechanism to seek variances. And they articulate a burden. So the process is contemplated. It has been since the jail commission standards have been in force and effect. It is not an untoward thing to seek variances. It is a part of jail management in Texas. And if there are some good ideas in this -- with these jail officials and they are extremely capable people, without exception, every single person that I have come in contact with, accommodating and knowledgeable. If they can come up with sound ways in which to utilize bed space, sound correctionally, then doggoned it, we ought to make that attempt and exhaust that. If they say no, then we step back and maybe start questioning the rigidity, that word is so on point. If we are denied all 572 of those beds and I was a county actor, an agent, I would have some discussions over at the state capitol about those rules.
>> I --
>> I can --
>> okay. Steve, I really -- I really appreciate this -- this eye opening, I say eye opening because the things that I think that you disclosed here today, I didn't have that type of in depth knowledge of what you just presented to the Commissioners court in the -- and the public today. You brought up some very interesting points, the structural integrity of some of the buildings out there. You know, whether they can continue to be used and sometimes you have to -- you have to -- your own personal house may be in kind of bad shape, to go and buy a new one, sometimes you get a little loan to get some home improvement done to it.
>> boy, I do.
>> and that I think that's what why we have to look at stuff. The structural integrity is very significant and just because those things can still be utilized. I think that you have brought up some real good points of possible 336 beds out of that. According what you said. You -- those beds multiplies by $40,000, that a lot of money. You also brought up the point on the variance beds, also the point, I posed this question to you, specifically, purposely asked you the assessment time that you felt that we would need to really look at and say, well, are these variance beds, da-da-da, adequate, how long would it take to assess to see what could really be glooerned from those -- gleaned from those 572 beds. 30 to 60 to 90 days, whatever that time frame is for someone to get out and look at it. I think that's really critical and important. The luxury point of view, what metropolitan government end up giving single cells, kind of cost -- a luxury, that's unheard of kind of stuff. So I think all of these things, the combination of what you have put forth before us raises very serious questions in my mind, sometimes we have got to step back and look at where we are. The point of you bringing the -- the information for us as far as looking at the management jail, management type of program, the reclassification or the classification of inmates, per se, are they actually classified properly in -- the last time that was done as far as that particular initiative is concerned, how do we go back, what must the sheriffs do to go back if it hasn't been done in a certain number of years, maybe that's something that needs to be done from that end. It's a combination of a whole bunch of factors that I think that you have disclosed here today that would lead me to believe that we need to take a very serious look at what we are dealing with here as far as even going forward with some of this stuff. Now, I have another concern and I want to bring this up because the time -- the clock is ticking. We have to go before the voters sometime in November. For them to vote on this. However, there is a cut-off point as far as when we can take information before we set this on the ballot. I don't know the exact time on that. The exact deadline, drop down date that we have to make a decision before this -- [indiscernible] before valid, I don't have that information, anyone here have that information? As far as drop down deadline final date that we have.
>> third week in August.
>> third week in August. Let's say that. Second or third week, let's say that for the sake of my point what I知 trying to get through. That is in a we don't have very much time. If we are going to look at this big picture of the -- of the involvement and the assessment and all of these kind of things, in the state legislature, letting them know that you know we have a lot of inmates right here in Travis County that are in that jail that should be in the state jail. But they're not. I think they spend too much time hearing in my opinion then again the misdemeanors, the number of jails bed days that are -- that -- that are accrued by the person under a misdemeanor, how many days is that? I really don't know how many days that really is as of today. So I think it's a lot of things that we can look at. I think there's definitely some cost savings in a lot of these things we look at. Sometimes we just need to maybe pay strict attention to the things that folks are telling us of how we can do a better job, more efficiently, make it cheaper to spend money on other products as far as devoting it to other things that [indiscernible] I知 going to look at it very, very closely as we go through this process. Right now it lets me know we have a lot more home work and other things that we need to do as far as presenting this to the voters. Thank you for your input.
>> Commissioner Daugherty?
>> judge, thank you. Steve, I can't tell you how happy I am to have this kind of information for us. While I am still concerned about how we make this thing work with all of our staff. Because, you know, you read faces. The issue that we have here is can we get jail standards to a spot where we can take, I知 certainly willing to go, i've always said that I知 -- i've only been with Commissioner Gomez one time before them and you really sort of try to assess what you are supposed to say before these folks. But I have never been afraid to go and say you know we just don't need to spend money foolishly. We do need to take into consideration, as you well know, from our staffing standpoint, what are the things that we can do and that -- you know, that would be acceptable. You know, we are fortunate I mean I think we just got $100,000, I知 sure, that if we would have gone to cyd and said we want this kind of information given to us, for two years i've been asking, you know, our folks about having expertise to come in and delay some of these things, some of these things obviously make sense, some of these things are things that I知 -- I知 surprised that we can't come up with some of these, now, even though some of them might be questionable. Somebody may say well we would challenge that, but there is something in the middle here with regards to what we need to be doing. I mean, I -- we are fortunate as heck to have stumbled across you to be on this bond committee. I mean, because there are so few, even though -- even though we all know and we are very proud of the people that are willing to come and spend their time on bond -- bond committees, very seldom do you really have somebody that has the lay down credentials that says you know I do this for a living, I知 willing to come in here and share some of these things with you, how we take this thing to the next stage I think is the important thing here. I知 willing to move toward that next step. I do understand that -- that we need to -- cooperation with -- with tcso and how we move forward. But, boy there are some -- the one telling thing to me, when you tell me and from everything that I have read so far, that single cell capacity percentage national average is less than 10%, with the plan that we have before us, if we would have just taken hok and its word and said let's go do this thing, to think that we would have 50% of the people that we incarcerate in this community in single cell. Something is not right. I知 sorry that we got to have you tell us that versus us asking from within why that is the case. Especially since -- if the national average, is the national average somewhere in the 10% range. I don't -- I don't think that I made reference to that. Let me speak to that, though, because that's an important issue. Two things though harking back to one of your comments about overreacting or whatever. That 50% is rough. There's no question it's -- it's very, very high relatively speaking. But probably typically your single cell population, depending on what kind of classification scheme that you have and whether you fold in some special categories, should run somewhere, anywhere from five to 20 at the top end in my view in a metropolitan jail, 25%. So I -- I urge you to work on a range of somewhere, you know, two 10 to 25%, the point is that 50%, in my view is not -- is not a situation that I know any metropolitan jail enjoys in the u.s.
>> in deference to hok, they are not making stuff up. They were taking direction from Travis County and staff about programmatically what was needed. Those professionals plugged that in. I don't want to make it look like they're the one that's came up with this scenario. They were acting on Travis County instructions, so I want to make that really clear.
>> I didn't mean to be disparjing about hoc -- hok, they were given, came up with this, came up with that. That was not my intent.
>> we had a precisely worded agenda item, presentation of alternative strategies and recommendations, we received six or seven. In my view, we ought to research and investigate each of them between now and next Tuesday and next Tuesday formally decide how to proceed. We really appreciate your help, these are some ideas that --
>> really.
>> I certainly had not thought about. Speaking of ideas, we do have a whole lot of other recommendations from the advisory committee, bond advisory committee. That's already been announced, if we could get other committee members to come forward at this time.
>> thank you, steve, I really appreciate that.
>> that was $20 million of the total recommended.
>> I am pleased to see so many of our bond committee members up here, personally thank you again for everything that you have done.
>> > I rounded up all of the help that I could, Commissioners.
>> you have a bunch of them with you.
>> I feel kind of awkward speaking after steve martin, like monty montgomery following tiger woods at the tee. I will do the best I can. Anyway, this is our second report. Most of this report you have gotten the jail recommendations, we will talk about some more if you wish. Probably not necessary.
>> if you have any specific questions about each category, we want to report on the results of our public meetings. The proposed public hearings that you have scheduled is we go forward with the numbers, we are going to present to you today. We've had pretty good turnout at the public meetings. About 160 people have come forward. A lot of them some -- some -- some with one idea, one idea that they want to push forward. Some of the committee meetings were well organized of people that want certain things on the bond issue. I think it's perfect and proper. If they want to get something done, that's the with a I to do it. I accept after a percent of the numbers which you probably have is to have five more public hearings, present to the public the number that's the committee recommended to the court. Now, after we have those hearings, it's possible that each committee may meet and want to make some changes and the recommendations. But hopefully not make changes in the amounts. Because we are right, we are agents over the amount that -- a little over the amount that you asked us to come forward with, which was $100 million at the present time our recommendations total $114 million. So we are a little over that. And we are hoping maybe with the next series of meetings we maybe can address that and bring that down if that's possible. Or better still maybe we could get some numbers from you people that the amount of money that's available without causing a tax increase is a little greater than what we were told originally, that's wishful thing on our part -- thinking on our part, but if that happens that would be great. The result of the public meetings have been presented to you people in a packet, that should have been delivered to you all on Friday. There are numerous letters and comments and minutes and everything, if you want to go through them and look at them. We did look at them and we did take that into consideration. These are the proposed bond project list that's we are recommending to the Commissioners court or rather recommending that we go forward with the public hearings using these numbers. Now, number one, the jail improvement project was $20 million. The mobility projects was 54,476.93. The drainage floodplain buyout projects $9,800,000. Parks and open space, 30,500,000. That totals [indiscernible] now, let me tell you in -- in reaching this number, I think that it's significant for the Commissioners court to understand that the committee had a tremendous job to do. The kinds of project that's were presented to us over a period of these deliberations were over $400 million, for us to come forward with only 114 million took a little bit of soul searching and obviously there's a lot of people that probably not very happy with these recommendations. But we have to deal with the amount of money that's available without causing a tax increase and that's what we are trying to do, will continue to do. In the meantime, we will go forward with our public hearings, next week. I think that you will have a list of them, we hope that -- that the Commissioners and the judge will be able to attend the meetings in their areas, we are having four meetings, one in each Commissioner's districts, one here at the county courthouse. So if you could, it would be nice. Now, what we have done with our committee members, that's a lot of meetings to do in one week, that we have flipped the group up, tried to get the people that live in precinct 1 on the committee to try to go to that committee meeting if possible. Not limited to them, but certainly that way. That's the way we are moving it around. We should have three or four committee members at each meeting. But with me here is mr. Coleman who handles the mobility projects. What's your name? Perry lorents the vice chair. [indiscernible] parks and open space, akins who comes to every meeting that I ask him to attend so that pliewfs that both he and I are retired. Nell is also here, we are glad to have her here. Now, I can -- if you all have any questions on any of the committee reports, we will be glad to answer them if we can. And on the jail, I think that you have heard a have I good presentation. Just took up a lot of hard time, we won't take too much of y'alls, I think it was necessary that he make that report. As you all well know, jails are not -- in my experience, the county Commissioner, we haven't had a single person come to the committee meetings and speak in behalf of the jail, but we all understand on -- all of the committee members understand that jail he is the county Commissioner's responsibility. Whether nobody likes it at all, you still have the statutory responsibility to address that. You are going to do that. All that we were trying to do is come up with a number that everybody can live with. I知 not sure that we have done that, but we have tried. At this time if you have any questions -- let me add one more thing. In addition to that we did have a owe something that came out of the parks and open space committee, a recommendation that exceeds the $100 million allocation and this was voted on by the full committee and approved unanimously that we recommend to the Travis County Commissioners court that they put another item on the -- on the bond package that would -- that would cause a tax increase and that would be an actual area proposition to -- to buy -- to purchase -- to purchase up to $60 million worth of open space and in area they feel desirable, but mainly across the edward's aquifer and along the colorado river. That's caused some comments. That exceeds what we were asked to do, but the committee felt strongly about it. We bring it to you for your consideration. That is my report. We will be back with the final report when we have our public hearings, I think starting next week.
>> okay.
>> thank you.
>> in the past we have addressed projects that -- that are almost ready to go. And that -- the reason that's important to me is that kind of learning from the past, if -- if bond projects were approved and we weren't ready to go with them, then there was a delay, obviously. But what that caused was a budget overrun in the long temperature. I just like I said, I got my knuckles rapped enough, I don't want to do that anymore. So was that one of the guidelines that you all were maybe working under, if the project was, whether it was mobility or whether it was drainage for instance, that you would recommend a project if it was ready to go as soon as it was approved by the voters.
>> yes, that was the consideration. And you might want to address that in more detail, is that --
>> [indiscernible]
>> okay. Good.
>> one thing I wanted to add, related to the mobility projects, we wanted to make folks away, big ticket items, wells branch parkway, pecan, slaughter lane, howard, rhymer's, peacock, they involve a public private partnership. We have been unbelievably firm about we need people to sign on to these public private partnerships before we are going to put this on the bond ballot. When we didn't do that in '01 it took four years as of last week to get one of those forward. Because there was a delay. The judge and I have a -- it's really incustom bent, especially if richard as you just mentioned there, if we need to kind of swap some things out, it is going to be incumbent upon these public private partnerships to get your act together, otherwise something may be swapped out because of it. The other thing, too, i've had this discussion with you all and people in the audience as well. I really have full faith and confidence in the voters to -- to assess the wordiness of each and every single one of these propositions. So it kind of -- unnerves me just a tad to say oh, by the way if there's a tax increase, blame it on open space. Because I don't believe that at all. What we can and will be presenting is a set of options. People don't have to vote for the propositions that you have brought forward whether it's a jail or mobility or parks and open space. And so if you tell people listen, whatever combination you pick, that is 100 million or less, it's cost neutral. And any combination that you pick that's over 100 million and here are increments it's going to be a tax increase. There could be folks out there who go you know what the only thing I like is open space, let's say is the $60 million item. In their mind they have figured out a scenario that there is no tax increase. We need to have faith in the voters to get educated. We have done this in the past. Rather than saying it's the fault of any one proposition that kicks it over, we ought to feel very good about whatever it is that we put forward in a list of options and have faith in the voters to evaluate their wordiness knowing that whatever the combination is, worthy projects are what's kicking it over into a tax increase and not say it's the fall of blank. Because I don't want ever want to get to that point. It's the tax increase when it's the combination that would be the tax increase.
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> ...the other question that I need to have answered, and it's not by the citizens bond committee, it's probably staff, is that $100 million, is that a certain number? And we'll have to look at that ourselves to see so we can work with your recommendations.
>> I don't see anyone here from pbo. Now, the committee intends to have public hearings on the recommendations before us today?
>> that's correct, judge. We have already scheduled them -- they've been scheduled and a press release has been released, and we'll start Monday the 25th at the Pflugerville justice center in downtown in southeast Travis County at the elementary school in del valle and the satellite offices and in the Travis County precinct 3 office. There's a press release been issued, gieselman's people can explain how they're reaching out to folks because they're doing all the bond work.
>> you probably ought to run that schedule on channel 17. But when would you expect feedback from the Commissioners court? After the last public hearing?
>> well, yeah, correct. I think there's a time line, and I don't have it with me, judge, that shows, what is it? We've got to meet -- i've just been told we're probably going to meet after these meetings on August 9th and look over what the outreach was and like I said, the committee may feel like changing some of the recommendations based on those hearings. Because we're going to the hearings this time telling them what projects we're recommending. In the other public hearings we just went and told them we were doing a bond program and these are the candidate projects and people comment odd their favorite ones and we went on.
>> August 9th is your meeting for our comments?
>> for our meeting, yes, sir. And we can come back any time after that.
>> okay. Commissioner Davis?
>> I want to thank the bond committee for your volunteer service. You didn't have to do this. It's all the volunteer effort. And I think you've done an outstanding job, I mean really, and we really do appreciate your service. And as we go through this process, though, there are still things -- when I looked at this report and the things that were in it, I looked at some things and said, wait a minute, something's not there. And I said oh, wait a minute, da, da, da, mobility and drainage. So in my mind I知 going to bring some things back to you trying to coordinate transportation mobility network situations in precinct 1 is a mammoth task. You mentioned Commissioner Sonleitner, she mentioned something about phase 2 of the howard lane end of this thing, the sh 130. We're not where we should be on that. And, of course, there may be swap out opportunities for those persons, especially on the public-private scottie partnership. I think they're very straightforward, looking at 50% participation. I think those are very critical. And of course you may have those that may not want to cooperate and do that, so we may have to look at swap outs. But even in the swap out range of thing, we're looking at other cooperative efforts by other people that would like to participate the 50/50 range and allow these mobility projects and also some very critical drainage projects, jones road and all that stuff, lockwood, those are things that I know I think still should be added to the list. So it's not over with. Nothing is etched in stone. A couple other projects, mobility projects. Extension from 290 and sh 130. Those are a strong possibility the city of Austin has agreed to participate in the funding of some of these projects. And I think it's a thing that we can look in the direction of. They were looking at a third participation of construction as far as what the county puts up, the city is looking at putting a third of that up. So there's all kinds of funding opportunities that I think we can look at to make sure that we reach our goal and having many partners here in thing, but it's not over. And I just want to make sure that you understand that there are still some things that need to come into full flor rish as we come into this and the Commissioners court make a decision before we take it to the voters of Travis County. But again I would like to thank each and every one of you for the outstanding job you're doing. Thank you so much.
>> any objection to running the public hearing hearing schedule on channel 17? And there are specific times here. All the meetings at 6:30 except the one on July 26th at 6:00 here in the Commissioners courtroom. So if there's no objection, we will run those, and staff for the advisory committee -- is that pbo? They'll see that that's done for us.
>> tnr.
>> tnr. Anything else of the committee? Again, we appreciate y'all's service and future service.
>> thank you.
>> anybody else here on the committee's recommendations? Thank y'all very much. We'll have this back on at the appropriate time in the future. Actually, this will be back on next week. I don't know that there will be anything on 13, but we did not post it for action today. We'll have it on next week just in case we take action, 12 and 13. Thank y'all.
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.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 11:18 AM