Travis County Commissioners Court
August 30, 2005
Item 32
Number 32, consider and take appropriate action on recommendations from outside consultants administrative review, including staffing of medical examiner's office. Good afternoon.
>> good afternoon, judge. Steve ball, emergency services coordinator. I had to stop and think which hat I知 wearing. We have opened a shelter in Austin for the hurricane victims. What has happened is with the mandatory evacuations going on now due to increased flooding, the levies, there's been restricted traffic flow on i-10 and some other roads. The shelters that they had open are moving back further. They have requested we open one. We have one open. It will be at the tony burger center. We are currently expecting anywhere from 75 to 150 folks in here. But anyway, that's what's going on. So I知 sorry. It has nothing to do with item 42. Several weeks ago you received the report and received a briefing on the recommendations that were involved with it. Basically dave came back and there are 14 recommendations that were presented to you. Some of them at no cost can be implemented, worked on with current staff. Some of them at a cost associated with it, which is not -- was not included in the m.e.'s '06 budget request. And there are other requests that said that those costs needed to be determined at a later point in time. What we actually came back before you today was to ask for direction on where we need to go, how you would like to proceed with us. We feel like you have mentioned in the past you want the office to head toward the accreditation process, and we need some direction on on what we needed to do with current staffing levels, also for '06 staffing levels. And basically looking for direction from the court to where we want to start with this process.
>> okay. Can we hear from the rest of the --
>> [inaudible - no mic]. The ones that we specifically wanted to put on the agenda to approve today or the first time we could get it on the agenda on a Tuesday? Do you recall?
>> I have a list and I have a presentation. I was told that would not be gone over today.
>> we did the vehicles. What's on that list? Now, we got --
>> the other items were the staffing.
>> the list from the consultant's report basically.
>> yeah.
>> is there something other than what's on that?
>> there's a list of what on the consultant's report, and then separate from that were our fiscal year '06 budget requests. There were two positions in that request. They were mention understand the report, but they are separate. Mentioned in the report. And those positions are basically the report was two investigators and a coo position, I believe, and our budget request was for a pathology technician and a forensic nurse senior investigator. The review came after the budget process, and the review has identified additional f.t.e.'s than were in the original fiscal year '06 budget request.
>> [inaudible - no mic]. There were some things that we said we would approve if it was on our Tuesday agenda.
>> well, I know we said we would head toward accreditation. Everybody is in agreement with that. There are certain specific steps that you have to take to do that. The other thing was that the highlighted report to me in terms of staffing was more like it wasn't an office manager that was called, what it called?
>> it was called a chief operating officer.
>> a chief operating officer. So if that's one position, there would be five others or four others?
>> there's four others, judge.
>> so a total of five.
>> a total of five, yes, judge.
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> we got the report itself, which he with had during the work session, and I did not --
>> was that in the backup?
>> I think that's what -- we were relying on, but I didn't bring it down.
>> is it specifically what they're recommending today exactly?
>> we need to put this back on to officially receive the report for one thing. I want to do that, but I also thought it necessary to do some directions on the other. And I think that what we ought to do is go ahead and authorize the creation of a job description for that top position that was recommended and posting it. This is not one that you will fill overnight, right? It will take some time to find a pool of suitable applicants, then do the interviews and get that done. And in view of the time that it will take, my guess is that we ought to go ahead and put that together and authorize that if hrmd can work with dr. Bayardo and anybody else, we fut putt that job together and we post it. And the big thing may be salary. And I think we want to be able to afford it, but at the same time you want to set it at a salary where you are likely to attract the kind of person you need to fill the job. Some of this is for executive session. I see our lawyers out there. And allen, there's some budget issues too, right?
>> if y'all are authorizing a position to be posted and the salary to be determined, I can just imagine from the job description -- this position of course isn't part of the fy '06 budget and you're looking at a pay grade undoubtedly in the 20's for the position, so you're looking at a salary plus benefits of between I壇 say easily 80 to 100,000 to fill the --
>> we did not have in mind the county judge retiring and applying for this judge, allen. What we ought to do is authorize the creation of an appropriate job description, and as much as we can determine the appropriate salary range and have that discussion next Tuesday. How is that? Can we get that done in a week? And we will just -- we'll have an appropriate posting on it if we can get that done by, say, Friday. Even if it's a draft that we have to revise between Friday and Tuesday, if the court could see it Friday over the weekend and on Monday, I think that would be good. And maybe what we ought to do too is give some thought to the specific positions between now and next week and land on those as a court. Whether they're in the budget or not. Because I知 thinking that to the extent that we're creating new positions, even if we authorize them in the budget, you've still got to go through the posting, interviewing, you know, hiring and probably those people giving notice. Hopefully they'll be employed somewhere, giving notice there before they come to Travis County. So you almost built in four to six weeks anyway.
>> we're actually going to be ready for the investigators and the technician. I知 currently filling a vacant investigator position right now and there's currently a posting for a pathology technology and we'll be able to pull within 90 days. So that actually could be a very quick process once it's approved.
>> I think we need to see probably another time, not only the job description, but specifically how these would fill in for us. Do you understand what I知 saying? I know I was left with the impression that there's a critical need for them based on the consultant's support and testimony we got from y'all during the work session, but we might ought to have that refreshed. We heard a whole lot of departments after we heard y'all.
>> it's to meet our minimum staffing requirements. It's based -- we are currently not staffed to meet our staffing requirements.
>> okay.
>> I can give -- bring those schedules back in the presentation. I can bring that back.
>> I think that would be -- or rather than have us pull our backup documentation, what if we just get one set of what we think the appropriate documents are, then copy those and make them available to the court? That way we'll make sure that we have the right documents also.
>> well, I think you have two processes going on, too, that happen sort of side by side. You have the staffing request that was presented in their budget request and then you have a separate budget request which was related to the -- a separate proposal which was related to the study. What on your budget preference worksheet and discussed at the departmental budget hearing essentially was the positions that were requested as part of the budget process. And besides that you have the positions that were proposed as part of the study. So I don't know if --
>> I知 hoping we can bring as much of it together as possible next Tuesday. But to the extent that a majority wants to wait on part of it, I can live with that, but I知 thinking whatever we're going to do, I don't know that waiting another month helps any. My guess is even if we only approve part of the recommendations, the sooner we go ahead and make the approval and put the process -- in process, then we're better off in progress.
>> it seems like -- are those the minimum requirements? Then that helps us catch up with what's going on.
>> we have asked for the minimum. That's the -- outside of the coo position, the four are at minimum.
>> what's the total come to? Do you recall offhand?
>> the total number of f.t.e.'s?
>> money.
>> that I do not know.
>> I can estimate it based on the information from front of me you're looking at 200 plus the coo position.
>> there's one thing I can suggest here. Next Tuesday's the sixth. Well, next Wednesday is the seventh and that's when we begin markup. Not presuming I know how anybody is going to be marking up their agenda sheet, I can't imagine that this is not going to be a topic for conversation on if not the first day of markup, rather than making this a thing on the sixth, to make this -- I知 going to presume it's going to be on the agenda on the seventh, that there's going to be a discussion on what I need to have clarity on is what is the -- what are the gap proposals between what you have clearly laid out in your budget presentation that have line item agenda numbers attached to them and what else is out there. And obviously the coo is one of those, but I want to make sure that there's -- I want to get the complete list so that I知 hopeful at least from my point of view that I知 looking at a global solution here and not, oh, I did a piece and I forgot that piece. I just need to see the big picture, but it may be that I just have to presume that there's more than one person interested in talking about the m.e.'s office on the first day of markup. It's important.
>> can you show that to us on Tuesday? To the extent we need to delay it one week, fine.
>> actually, one day, judge.
>> one day.
>> costing out the positions won't be difficult. It gives an idea of what the coo is slotted at. Now, it was my understanding from the budget presentation that it wasn't necessarily all of the positions as minimum staffing requirements. It was my understanding from the departmental budget meeting that, for example, the forensic nurse fimd in some of the gaps for some of the other positions. And when I talked with the department in the past, the primary budget request that they had was for their original pathology technician and their forensic nurse and that the other positions, while also important, came in after they had made their budget presentation. Now, I might have misunderstood my die logs that I致e had with the department on that.
>> what I brought up in that is that we previously identified that we needed more. For this budget year we only asked for two, with the intentions of asking for more the following fiscal year. The review has identified the necessity for those additional investigator positions. We only ask for two this year with the intentions of asking for more next year. We didn't want to throw six at you in one year. We've determined what we needed the most.
>> I値l put the staffing cost into a memo for you all.
>> but they are all needed the same.
>> we need to try to put all the pieces together, we'll review and discuss those on Tuesday. And if we need to take a few more days, then we will. We'll take whatever action we can on Tuesday. The coo need the job posting done, if we can just pull and see the postings for our investigator position, we've already had in-house --
>> correct, we already have that. And we already have for the budget request written one for the forensic nurse investigator position. We did develop one for that. That's already done.
>> and that's on your budget preference -- your budget agenda worksheet so I can distill that information for you in a memo.
>> so the new stuff is really the job description for the coo?
>> that's really the newest thing. Everything else has been identified and gone over. We have all of that information.
>> but the forensic nurse investigator, we don't have salary or pay grades at this point.
>> we have the departmental budget request. We have an estimate.
>> it is a very important position, very important. They're all equally important. I do want to stress that.
>> have have we gotten an update on what's going on with m.e. 1 and m.e. 2, and I mean vehicles, not pathologists?
>> we almost have m.e. 1 in our possession. We're waiting on the vehicle deck system, which is just a modification for it. Everything else is finished on that one. And we're in the process of getting 2 replaced. We've been in touch with vincent as far as what we need and to my understanding he is in the process of ordering that.
>> and m.e. 1 will be on the streets when?
>> mid September.
>> mid September, okay. A couple of weeks.
>> let's do that and have this back on next week.
>> judge, do we need to authorize the creation of the job description for coo so linda is --
>> we're going to give directions to put it together try to cost it out if we can look at it next week. I guess it's a short week since Monday is a holiday, but if you could get with the department's reps between now and then, that would help.
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> Commissioner Sonleitner and I will work on labor day, so if you get it to us on Friday, we will get a lot done on Tuesday morning.
>> do we need to do the same for the forensic nurse investigator position? We have an estimate out there. We have create whad we think would be the job description.
>> is it possible that we might be able to -- because we were pulling from best practices from other m.e. Offices. Is it possible that we might be able to get those descriptions of those jobs --
>> I have those and I have their salaries.
>> we might have some good hard copy work in our hand that could assist us in incorporating what works well for us into a new job description so we're not starting from scratch.
>> correct. I have all that documentation.
>> I would share that with hrmd, maybe huddle with linda or her rep and that will help, I think.
>> because we have actually set that salary lower than what would put them at market, within that.
>> our goal is to land on this Tuesday or Wednesday?
>> Tuesday or Wednesday. [ inaudible ].
>> so you may not believe it, but that's incredibly fast for us. [ laughter ]
>> I知 ready.
>> can I say something? I don't know that I知 going to be ready to do this next week. Now, maybe what I have heard is just street talk, but there's something going on much greater than just simple personnel and funnel people into the m.e.'s office. This is just -- if I知 wrong on this, then tell me that I知 wrong, but I知 not very interested in just throwing personnel at you if there is a greater something going on with not all is happy within the family over there. I mean, I need to get comfortable because what I heard was pretty disturbing, but I don't know. I know just enough not to even be completely extremely dangerous. So if there is something going on that I need to know that before I知 willing to just start throwing personnel at the m.e.'s office. We sat through the reports and we know that there are big recommendations. We know that there are things that need to change. I mean, just, for example, I mean, getting accredited, I知 way uncomfortable with -- I壇 like to make sure that we've got the m.e.'s camp really running smoothly, I mean, within just the confines of the m.e.'s camp. If we're doing that, then we can smoothly move towards accreditation, whatever, then okay, but I know there's somebody over there looking at me that knows what I知 talking about because I have been told that from some very reliable sources. So for whatever it's worth, if you need to get to me, if you need to get me some information or if y'all need to sit down and say, let's make sure that we're all on the same page with what we need and which direction we want to go --
>> I need to get this information.
>> we'll have a few more discussions before we take action. The other thing is if there are questions that if we have questions or requests for specific information, it may be best to get that to a good point person like pete between now and then, and let's make as much progress as we can on Tuesday.
>> and I知 going to be respectful too that there may be multiple parallel processes going on in the community at the same time. And what I need to respond to is the one that is clearly been thrown on our place of us having this audit done by the consultant that came up with some very specific recommendations on how to improve operations and to take it to the next level. And that is what I need to act on no matter what else is going on out there that I hope helps the situation, but certainly it can't hurt the situation in terms of staffing and stepping up to the plate on some identified shortcomings in terms of numbers of people that are needed to take this to the next level in terms of us being -- taking it to the next level. I値l put a period at the end of the sentence.
>> okay.
>> and that's still being respectful of other things that may be going or brewing out there, but I致e got to respond to an audit that we authorized that I need to respond to because there are some recommendations and there are concerns raised in there that I cannot sit around and wait for somebody else to bubble up and put over here, and it doesn't mean that those discussions can't occur, won't occur and should occur, but I致e got to respond to this consultant's report which says, Karen, get on the move.
>> we'll all work together and push this wagon uphill, as one of our former senators would say. Move that we formally accept the consultant's report.
>> second.
>> discussion? That means -- this means paying the consultant also, y'all. [ laughter ] all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote and we'll have this back on next week posted for specific action. Maybe we'll have the agenda divided into multiple parts that we can address each one of them?
>> will do.
>> thank you for your patience too. I hated to make y'all wait, but the others waited a long time this morning.
>> I understand.
>> thank y'all.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, August 31, 2005 12:10 PM