Travis County Commissioners Court
November 1, 2005
Item 35
35. Consider revisions proposed by the Travis County hospital district to the interlocal agreement for services and take appropriate action.
>> I provided you a red-lined copy of the -- of all of the changes that the hospital district had requested that be made. Most of them were fine tuning. We decided to make -- for the most part I can say it's things that -- that are fairly easy to recommend. There are three changes, actually four, that I want to highlight to you. That you might want to just take a little closer focus. On page 1, all of the language -- on page 8, all of the language that was added under third party beneficiary. It all appears new, it's like two pages of underlying, but it's actually what was in last year's agreement. I had cut all of that out thinking it wasn't going to apply, the hospital district said we would really like to have all of that back in. We put all of that back in. Let me say one other thing to that, I guess you, as I said, the red-lined version, but last Tuesday when trish was here waiting for this item. We talked about a couple of little things, if I could have you stacy pass that down. There were two other little changes that we made while stacy was here, she's prepared to sign it as it is with those little changes. One was that we put -- we put language in section gi, at the top of that page, altogether, but it was the same thought, basically the same language. In the little 3 on the bottom of that page, we were finally able to talk the hospital district folks into having, if we want to lease or if they want to lease or if they want to buy or if we want to sell any of the facilities that we own, that the clinics are in, by mutual agreement, we can do that. So that this language, this additional language facilitates that transfer. How we can get that contracting process to start. Okay? The second major change that you will see, on page 12, in your red-line version, that's the $250,000 that the hospital district provided us for the mental health services, we put that in this agreement. The next is also on that page, custodian of records, that is a new concept that the hospital district requested for the investment purpose -- for investment services, as well as the purchasing services. We will provide them a custodian of records whenever they are looking for those records we will have them. And then the last thing is -- on page 13 is the automatic renewal of the contract. Last year we just -- it just stopped. But now we will have an automatic renewal process. I’m sure that there may be some amendments that may need to happen in the future. But at least we won't be stuck with this -- with this strange period where we are not having a contract.
>> but the intention is to [indiscernible] this for court consideration each year. It's just that if we don't -- if we are slow in surfacing it, it automatically renews, business goes on, [indiscernible] legal issues.
>> yes, sir.
>> those are the major concepts. Any other questions that you all saw in looking through the red line.
>> when it says automatically will renew, does it mean all terms and conditions of the previous year automatically renew at those numbers, there are some things in here that are tide to specific people, specific salaries, granted the money for the children's health partnership is specifically listed as one time, is that a renewed one time? I just want to make sure that we have not also created issues where we need some kind of a line saying the -- the working partnership is automatically renewed, however there will be a -- a modification presented shortly to the Commissioners court to reflect things that are based on specific salaries or -- or programmatic kinds of things. It's kind of the same thing that we do with our e.m.s. Interlocal. Yeah, the master agreement rolls over. But there's a mod 1 within a week saying here's the budgeted number by Travis County, city of Austin to reflect what is reality and not simply an old number that is not correct so that the auditor will allow them to be paid.
>> right. I think you can almost guarantee that we will see amendments at this time or preferably in September of each year.
>> okay. At the court's request, we can change the lapping and contact them to make sure that's acceptable -- oh, she's here. If we wanted to add a sentence that adds modifications --
>> I don't think it needs to. As long as everybody knows that yeah it's going to need to come back to us with any kind of modifications pretty early in the fiscal year. Just so that people can properly be paid.
>> we do a pretty good job of surfacing those issues during our budget process and say before budget markup this year? Did we?
>> I will let the hospital district speak for their own selves, I think it went pretty smoothly, this relationship with p.b.o., met with each one of the departments, got the number and then transferred it over and I think it was pretty smooth this year.
>> yeah, actually it -- fairly early with -- with the initial estimates in the spring and then we modified the numbers as they became more final towards the end of the year. Actually, there was a very last minute change to reflect all of the final numbers. So I think the process works well.
>> I think it will be smoother next year because we will be renegotiating or restabbing these terms. We will be simply modifying terms that already exist, changing some numbers. I think that process will go more smoothly next year as well.
>> questions? Comments? All right, then I move approval of this item. And which is 35. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
>> thanks, judge. Alicia, if we -- beg your pardon?
>> tricia, this week averaged out last week's? [laughter] six hours and -- two minutes.
>> I appreciate the two minutes. Thank you. [laughter]
>> thank you, we appreciate your patience from last year, also.
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, November 1, 2005 8:22 AM