Travis County Commissioners Court
September 13, 2005
Item 28
28 -- let's 28 and we'll go back to 23.
>> 28 is to consider and take appropriate action to approve an order revising the hourly rate of $10 charged for vehicle usage for non-Travis County services by employees of the sheriff's office. And actually, sheriff's office and any other peace officers, right? I think that's who the policy covers. Am I correct on that? It covers all peace officers who do off-duty work and use a county vehicle.
>> yes, I believe that does.
>> if we take action on this today, we'll ratify it as to the other affected employees. Mr. Derryberry, were you about to start a very brief, relevant discussion? [ laughter ]
>> during markup last week you all requested this item to be put on the agenda. We provided a little memo to you that indicates that it might be possible to increase this to $20 on the basis of a cost methodology that was provided in the memo, and I will be quiet after this.
>> and y'all, I want to acknowledge jamie page from the sheriff's office was consulted, who does a lot of the work with the fleet, and he was actually able to get us a benchmark from the national association of fleet administrators about how to help calculate it related to the capitol. So that was a very good, helpful number for bill to plug in. Then we all know what's going on with fuel, so there's a fuel calculation there as well. And I know some questions have been raised about liability coverage. Whether we like it or not, there has been damage done to these vehicles. It's not all third party and we get 100% of whatever's back and so there's almost like a shared responsibility by everybody, even those who never do anything wrong, of having to cover the costs related to the replacement of some vehicles that have been damaged. Related to this, I think the calculation that's come in in terms of going from 10 to 20 is an appropriate one, and the only thing I would say that is -- there are some ongoing contracts. If we have an ongoing contract that is locked down for a specific time period, what that calculation is supposed to be, kind of like the expo center. You honor whatever the length of that contract is in terms of the price that was promised, but it seems like there are things that are new or did not have a locked down per hour charge, I think bill and jamie and others have done some really excellent work here of saying, this is what the true costs are and we ought to be recovering. And it's not really recovering it, it's just a good 20.
>> is there a recommendation?
>> there was a recommendation of $20. If you don't mind, I will add dan mansour to the folks and his staff for doing the liability calculation.
>> if you have come to address the court on this item, now is the time to come forward. The recommendation is to increase that charge from $10 per hour for the vehicle to $20 an hour. I heard 12 over the last 90 days.
>> yes, sir, could I ask a question? One of your calculations, wasn't it more than $20?
>> it's slightly more than that.
>> then I think we ought to get -- I think we ought to get every bit of it. As a matter of fact, I think that you ought to get 25% more than that. I wouldn't be happy with $20, I would be happy with $25. But I want full recovery. If it's $20 and some change, I壇 like to round it off to $21. Let's start getting what it costs us to operate things. I mean, period.
>> I could go to 21, but I think it needs to be close to what we think is the cost recovery. I think we're all sensitive to we're not here to make money and god knows we're not making money on this, but we ought to be able to justify it when somebody says, how did you come up with it that, that we've got a calculation here and it is appropriate to roundup to 21. And I think we then need to monitor this. Golly gee, we may need to monitor this in another six months simply because fuel is a big piece of this. And if the fuel costs continue to be as wacky as they have been, it may be more appropriate to take -- I値l move to 21.
>> the specific amount is $20.64. If you wish -- it does exclude the approved indirect administrative cost that the sheriff's office has that is part of what they can apply to federal grants. So there is not an -- it is a direct cost. So in some of our cost allocation models, we have used administrative costs, the indirect administrative cost as a percentage. Now, that may be -- I see our attorneys are looking at me and turning their heads, and I don't know whether that means that's real good or you're not sure.
>> a lot of these things are not things that were be under a federal grant.
>> there is an indirect administrative cost that the sheriff has that is not included in these costs. That's all I知 pointing out.
>> right, bill?
>> yes. Bill campbell with the sheriff's office. Since off duty coordination is under me, simply one caution if we set this rate too much higher than what it is currently, there is competition for off-duty jobs, and we do have a revenue now of I think it's about 200,000. This will increase that revenue proportionately, but we may get into the situation where we're pricing ourselves out of the off-duty market.
>> that may not necessarily be a bad thing, bill, in terms of we have made substantial investments in our law enforcement and peace officer salaries. They ought not have to go there for off-duty jobs. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
>> do we want, though, to take another week on this and hear from those who engage in this what we think the likely impact might be. I have answered two or three people have asked me, but it was only two or three, I thought the amount was $12.
>> that is the amount that we just recently raised our fee to.
>> I don't think financially the sheriff's office -- it's going to bother us wherever you set the policy. We're happy to collect it and get the revenue for the county. I think a.p.d. Is at six. Williamson county just went to 12. We have been discussing internally between 15 and 20. So I think somewhere in there we're in the ballpark. When we begin to go above 20 and approach even 25, that was when I thought a note of caution was appropriate. Y'all set the policy. We'll be happy to run with it and get the money.
>> okay. Speaking of impact --
>> scott burrows with the sheriff's office. The impact of not having officers working the off-duty jobs, if vendors choose not to hire those officers, then the incidents that occur at those locations will be picked up by the patrol staff. So the benefit of having officers working the off-duty jobs is they handle the jobs that occur at those establishments or locations where the off-duty jobs are -- where the vendors are. In lieu of us having to send patrol officers over there. When we start taking --
>> I知 sorry, scott, at what point is somebody working for Travis County and is when somebody working in that instance for the private party? I think if something clearly is the realm of the Travis County sheriff's office, it ought to be somebody on duty working for the Travis County sheriff's office handling that. I致e got some conflict of interest things going here that I don't think it's necessarily appropriate that somebody who is not working for Travis County is handling something and somebody is thinking they are working for Travis County at the time they're working for us.
>> no matter where they are, they are working for Travis County. They are peace officers who are commissioned by the sheriff's office and they take law enforcement action for whatever comes along their way there.
>> but if you've got an incident -- let's just say at a bar on a restaurant, it's different. Their salary for that off-duty job is not being paid for by Travis County, correct?
>> that is correct.
>> I have some real problems with there being that kind of, oh, just throw it off to the off-duty guy because they are not being paid by Travis County for that particular thing, and I think that that may be creating some issues that we've got really dealt with, and that is not necessarily the appropriate way to do it.
>> and there are also instances, particularly when dealing with traffic control, for large venues, large events that we simply don't have the resources to divert to take care of the traffic issues or the issues that result from that event.
>> but the vendors need to be paying for that, and that includes the cost of the car. If we basically want to say, hi, we're going to tax subsidize raves, let's just say it, we're going to tax subsidize bars, just say that, but I知 not comfortable with that and these folks need to -- we haven't changed this number in 15 years.
>> increase the fee so high that private vendors will not --
>> they will not pay that price.
>> that they will stop using off-duty officers. We'll still have to deal with the traffic issues, we will still have to deal with the comaints that arise out of that venue. We will have to use on duty staff to do that, and we just don't have the staff to divert to those large venues to do it.
>> they'll hire somebody else to do it. The marketplace will take care of it. We're not the only people that do this.
>> I too was thinking this was going to be $12, and jumping to 20, 25 causes me a pause to reflect on this. What we do in con strabl 3, we've got a different costing structure to what we do. We don't work bars. The bulk of our off-duty jobs entail subdivision patrols for m.u.d.'s in our precinct. And we don't have the -- we get ours replaced -- subdivision patrol we're averaging about 50 to 60 miles per four hour shift, so we're not doing 33 miles. We've got a different cost structure on what we're doing. I would like to have this postponed a week to think this through. Should we charge different rates for different activities or different liabilities and because we're not talking about -- we're not dealing with a vendor, we're dealing with another government agency, being the m.u.d.
>> I知 happy to wait for a week if you want, but I do think that you ought to get your full cost out of this. I mean, it just -- it doesn't make any difference to me whether somebody is six, 12 or whatever. If we can identify our financial model that says it is $20.64, then I think we ought to get $21. And we don't need to be subsidizing.
>> no. And I知 not advocating that at all. I think we should be able to recoup our costs, but I didn't have a chance to really crunch the numbers there as it relates to us and what we're doing in a specific function to see whether that's realistic or not.
>> does the Commissioners court wish to have two different prices, a constable's price and a sheriff's price?
>> we do need an item that covers whoever we plan to cover.
>> and you would have a sheriff's old car and a sheriff's new car.
>> the agenda item should be worded that way. I do think -- I don't know that it's necessary for a whole lot of folks to come down here, but if people have ideas about the impact that they want to share with us, an e-mail between now and Monday might would help. It requires a little bit of thought. My opinion is that 12 was just a little bot above and it had been 10 so long that it needed to go up. Doubling it may be appropriate, but I hadn't thought about it. We need to have part of this back on next week anyway unless we wanted to restrict the application.
>> and so people understand, it doesn't mean that they're travelling 33 miles during that one hour time period. It has to do with that is the equivalency of the wear and tear on the vehicle and the running of the air conditioning. And again, we did not pull this number out of a hat. We worked with jamie page at the sheriff's office because originally bill had a different number and jamie got us what the benchmark numbers are in terms of the equivalency on the wear and tear. It is not based on that that's how many miles that particular car put in during a particular time period. So again, I appreciate the fact that we got a benchmark from a national agency. It's wear and tear. It is not actual mileage.
>> and one thing I would like to add on to that is there's a function that traffic tickets are being written during some of the off-duty jobs which results in revenue to the county. It's kind of an offset. So that's what I知 saying. I don't have the hard figure right now.
>> judge, if you wouldn't mind, if you would indulge me, if you could put this on your executive session call, I could give you some legal analysis -- there are some legal issues involved in this and that I壇 like to share with you in executive session.
>> you'll share with us today?
>> yes.
>> I certainly don't mind. We'll call it up. Now, there are certain requirements here if you use a county vehicle for off duty work set forth in 3 a and b, are we meeting these requirements, odometer meetings and stuff like that?
>> yes, sir. We're billing off it.
>> okay.
>> and do the different agencies have restrictions in terms of how much time does somebody get to work in one wiek, be it for Travis County or off duty? Kind of a combined -- because quite frankly if there's a number, whatever the -- I知 asking a question.
>> you're scheduled to talk about the vehicle rate. And we don't need to talk about -- that's part of what --
>> no, it's tied into because of the using the cars to work off-duty cars --
>> please don't ask that question until you've talked to jim.
>> oh, boy, that's not good. [ laughter ]
>> anything else on this item today? We'll have it back on next week. Thank y'all very much.
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, September 14, 2005 9:23 AM