Travis County Commissioners Court
April 4, 2006
Item 11
We have a few other items that we need to get to. Beginning with number 11. Which is to consider and take appropriate action on recommendations for the revision of the central booking interlocal agreement between the city of Austin and Travis County. Good afternoon.
>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioners.
>> by the way, while we're waiting on y'all to collect yourselves, let's indicate our intention to call up the matter involving one of our consultants next, number 10, next if they're ready. Okay.
>> good afternoon, Commissioners, judge. I’m carol col vern, acting criminal justice coordinator. And we're here to make recommendations to the court on the revision of the central booking interlocal agreement between the city of Austin and Travis County. And we have two members of the negotiation team with us here today. At the table we have captain brown from the sheriff's office. And directly to my left is mike trimble with mtg management consultants. And he is the contracted program manager for the development of recommended solutions for the central booking interlocal. And I’m going to hand it over to him to proceed with the presentation.
>> okay.
>> thank you, carol. Mike trimble, mtg management consultants. And as you're aware, the 2000 interlocal agreement that we had with the city of Austin for central booking facility had expired at the end of fy '05. And we had talked about getting an amendment in place. We did get an amendment in place for one year to continue the interlocal agreement with some revised cost information in there and also with the provision that the city and county would get back together and work on the operational issues related to the central booking facility and try to bring recommendations to Commissioners court and city council by April first, 2006. In November 2005, we talked with the court and worked through a list of issues that were a priority for us to discuss with the city. And based upon that we got together with the city folks and I want to point out we have several city representatives here with us today. Judge mckee, the presiding judge of the municipal court, rebeak ca broussard also with the municipal court and we have lieutenant david parkinson with the Austin police department as well. And I also have to recognize the assistant city manager rudy garza who led the city team that was put together and the team's met, exchanged issues, and over the past several months worked diligently on reviewing the issues and trying to come up with some recommended solutions. And I definitely have to recognize all the departments and staff, especially sheriff's office, pretrial services, carol colvern in criminal justice planning from the county's side as well as all the folks on the city's side that I just mentioned and in addition to. Because they put a lot of work and were very creative in coming up with the solutions that we're presenting to you today. A couple of things before I get into talking about the developed recommendations that I do want to mention is what we're presenting to you today. It represents issues and the recommendations looking for direction on which way to go with the interlocal agreement. It was always understood that additional work on developing the details of what provisions would go in the interlocal and the actual cost impact would have to be developed past this point, and I’ll talk about the next steps later on in the presentation. And that the city and county folks would have to get back together and work on some of these things just to work out the details. The other thing I want to mention is that again, just the great cooperation and collaboration between the city and county staff. A lot of these issues got resolved just by sitting in the room together and talking through these things and that's a credit to all those folks who did that. So what I’m going to do is I just handed out a little slide packet for you, and what I tried to do is summarize what's in the executive summary of the report that you have in your backup materials. I’m not going to hit all of them because some of them that I mentioned were some that everybody got in the room and the issue was resolved by talking about it. I’m going to hit the ones that have the more substantial impact for the discussion today. The first one I want to talk about in your powerpoint packet is page 2. With regards to the prisoner property inventory process. And it was talked about that one of the bottle necks when prisoners are received at the central booking facility is when prisoners are presented by a.p.d. Officers to sheriff's office staff and then their inventory has to be whatever property that the prisoners have on them has to be searched for contraband or weapons. And it can take a substantial amount of time depending on the amount of property that people have on them. And this is definitely mentioned that it is time consuming from the a.p.d. Officer's side because they have to be with the prison that whole time when they're taken off the street and taken off the street and away from other things they need to do. So the sheriff's office had proposed that an additional post be allocated strictly to receive the prisoner and be there with the prisoner through this whole process, there by freeing up the a.p.d. Officer to go on to other duties or go back to the street. And what that proposal included, and this is in the report as well, is one shift, and it would be during the peak hours, later in the day, and it would -- based on the sheriff's analysis that was done, it would require two additional f.t.e.'s. Based on the analysis they had done, these positions were budgeted as a correctional officer and that the estimated cost was around $100,000. This was presented to the city and we had agreed that the county would be responsible for 75% of the cost and the county would fund 25% of the direct cost. Now, why 75/25? Well, it was discussed that the city is already -- when we talk about the cost model, it will become a little bit clearer, but the city will be reimbursing the county for a lot of the direct costs related to the central booking facility, so in effect the city will already be reimbursing about half of that survive% that we're putting up. So you add that to the 25% that they're funding and they're funding a little more than half of this position. And it was discussed that it position would be more of a benefit to the city folks that we felt like that was the right place to land on this.
>> we don't believe it will be a significant problem in that some inmates after the arresting officer leaves may well claim to have had on their persons items that the second officer doesn't have, can't find?
>> well, maybe captain brown can speak a little more to that.
>> well, they'll be turned over to the intake officer and they'll be responsible for them and they will be able to get ahold of that arresting officer in there's any issue. If there's contraband found on them, any drugs, they will able to get ahold of the officer.
>> I had in mind personal belongings. I remember we had one inmate who had a cart full of clothing and items, and when that inmate was released later on we admitted that we could not find all that we had inventoried.
>> right.
>> but I’m thinking that if I bring an inmate in, maybe a homeless person who has a cart full of belongings and at some point there may arise a question of whether or not a certain item, not contraband necessarily, wristwatch, rings, you know. It may not be a problem, but I’m thinking that's the only practical difficulty that I can think of.
>> yeah. I don't believe that that will be an issue any more than it is right now when they bring in and they have a lot of bulk items. They sign for them. It's listed on the sheet and they sign for all the items when we book them in and then they sign for them when they're out. So we do have a good tracking record for that.
>> captain, is there a requirement that these be certified peace officers who do this inventory process or can these be civilian slots?
>> they'll need to be corrections officers because they're dealing right there with the inmate.
>> is that like standard in most --
>> they don't need to be peace officers, no.
>> okay. Help me clarify whether this is somebody that needs to be on the pops scale or does not?
>> yes, on the pops scale. It does need to be an officer.
>> not necessarily a certified peace officer, but a corrections officer.
>> yes.
>> got it. Now I’m getting it. Okay. The person is in custody and the person doing the inventory will have control over the inmate's person basically during this time?
>> yes,. .
>> chain of evidence.
>> I’m there.
>> the next issue I wanted to mention was on page 3 of your packet, and it has to do with the use of intermediate weapons. Intermediate weapons refers to weapons such as taser guns, those type of things. And initially -- the reason I wanted to highlight this is I wanted to show how when folks got into a room and talked about issues we could find solutions pretty quickly. Initially the sheriffs office had talked about that they if felt they could get better information from Austin police department officers with regards to the use of intermediate weapons if they could get a report on what weapons had been used on a prisoner. When we got in the room and started talking about it, one of the concerns from the Austin police department's 's side was that prisoners might be turned away from the central booking facility if it was determined that something like an intermediate weapon was used and the sheriff's office made it clear that that was not the procedure. That they would accept them and it would be based on the assessment and not necessarily any weapons, particular weapons used against them. So based on that discussion, it was understood that this is really the procedure and now that everybody had more clarification, no further action was needed on that issue. That was one of the issues that we had had on our list. The next issue is on page 5, sufficiency of medical staff at the central booking facility. This is an issue that had been raised by the city of Austin. And the issue is that they were experiencing another bottleneck in the booking process because it seemed like there weren't enough nursing staff available to do the medical assessments, especially when we're talking about peak hours. And a theme through all of this is a lot of things back up during peak hours, but especially during peak hours it was causing more delays and taking their time away from getting back to the street and moving on to other duties.
>> can you define for the public what is peak hours?
>> absolutely. There was some information provided by the sheriff's office that we included in the report. And what it showed is that the highest volume hours, and please correct me if I’m wrong on this, but it showed from about 11:00 p.m. To four a.m. Are -- the hours with the highest volume of bookings that are coming in from Austin police department and really in general. Those are the highest volume areas. Especially when we talk about weekend hours, we talk about a Friday or Saturday night, if you want to pinpoint it to a set of hours, that's really the highest -- the peak hours for booking. Those windows on any given day will be higher volume. The sheriff's office, this is one of the things when we got into a room we got more understanding about this. The sheriff's office had mentioned that they were seeking to recruit nursing staff. They do have a 22% vacancy rate that they're experiencing right now across the agency. It was noted that they do pretty well with their staffing well, but the problem is in order to allocate staff efficiently. They were going to dri trooi to pursue filling those existing vacancies before we look at trying to make recommendations for adding a bunch of additional staff. And so again no further action is needed on that one at this time. The city agreed that that would be an appropriate step to take. Moving forward a little bit to page 8. The county had raised the question about the turnaround time for positive identification on a prisoner. What happens is the sheriff's office gathers information from the prisoners, compiles it and sends it over to the Austin police department who actually goes through the process of verifying the identity of this individual and sending that verification information back to the sheriff's office. Now, one of the things that the sheriff's office had mentioned is that -- usually the process works okay, but sometimes it can take several hours. Again, the theme back to those peak hours when they get a lot of prisoners in, this can start bogging down. And so one of the issues that the Austin police department had mentioned is that they have had several resource issues recently over the last couple of years and have lost some positions in their id unit. They're going to try to work on that issue. They're working on trying to get some resources in place to get some additional resources or positions in the id unit. So what we agreed to do is to develop a performance target for for getting the turn around time, the positive id turn around time for prisoners. And what we agreed upon is starting at two hours in the first year of the new multi-year agreement, going to 1.5 hours the next year and then one hour that third year to give them time to deal with some of the resource issues that they're experiencing.
>> > again on prisoner identification issues, there's a requirement that was put in the interlocal agreement that all prisoners that were brought to -- all city prisoners had to receive fingerprints and mug shots, photos taken. And we have a lot of repeat customers, as you know, that come into the central booking facility. And so that was one of the issues from the sheriff's office side is that the requirement is cumbersome for them because they're having to take the fingerprints and mug shots on people that they see 20, 30, 40 -- I may be understating that for some people. Some people they know by name. What they were looking for is an exception to that requirement so they would not have to do that for the lower level offenders and the repeat offenders. The city agreed that as long as they had recent fingerprints and photos that that would be acceptable. So what we worked out with them is to provide -- add a provision that the sheriff's office did not have to take fingerprints and mug shots on every prisoner provided that there are recent fingerprints and mug shots on file. And so recent will be defined as one year.ñi and we're looking at how best to define that, calendar year, but it will still be within one year. They will still take the fingerprints for all felonies. We're really talking about the misdemeanor offenses. And the sheriff's office would have discretion if the features of a prisoner that they have seen several times has changed substantially, they would have discretion if they felt it necessary to thaik those fingerprints and mug shots.
>> I would do it calendar year. We ought not be defining things that are just not realtime periods related to somebody's photo. I can understand for purposes of collection of data physical, but in terms of somebody going, is it fiscal year October, is it September? It ought to be a calendar year so there's no having to add up the math in anybody's head as to whatever it is. It's just the easiest way.
>> on page 12 we have an issue with regards to magistration process. And the magistration process, and I’m sure you're aware of this. I know you've had several discussions on this, but the process where a prisoner is basically taken in front of a magistrate and informed of the charge that is against them and their rights. And with regard to this process, the city right now provides the image straits, the municipal court judges actually provide the magistration services in the facility. And one of the things that was noted by the sheriff's office is that at some times they've noted that the judges are not available during the hours of operation for whatever reason. And so again, one of those things where we got in the room and we talked about it. Some of the representatives from municipal court had mentioned that there are some inconsistencies, I guess, with just the process as a whole in that the way the dockets are handled, sometimes one judge may want to see a group of folks, the other judge may want to see them piecemeal. So again, I think it's a matter of the sheriff's office and the image straits trying to feel out how the process works. Sometimes the image straits are magistrates are called away to talk to attorneys and things like that. One of the things we looked at is how best to deal with this issue. And some of the recommendations we have is to enhance the interlocal language, the magistrates are to be available during the hours of operations aside from breaks, and that they would make courtroom activities a priority in their services provided as opposed to some other duties that they have. Also, we would look to add language to the interlocal agreement that says the city would look to implement guidelines for the magistrate process in the future, again trying to get some consistency in how things are handled. Page 14 --
>> michael, you skipped 13.
>> well, I was trying to --
>> we can talk about this one. Do you want me to talk about this one as well?
>> yeah, because this is a real big deal that we've heard quite a bit from our folks in central booking about from the county's standpoint, and that is folks -- the magistrates physically leaving the building to go magistrate somebody over at a hospital.
>> absolutely.
>> and I got serious issues with that one as well in terms of them being gone for Austin undetermined amount of time, but I’ll raise a bigger one. Somebody being magistrated when they're in a hospital I am surprised some smart defense attorney has not questioned the legality of someone being told their basic rights while they are in a distressed, stressed or physically impaired state. I think that's a bad place to be. And if they're in the hospital, there's a reason for them to be in the hospital and there is more than sufficient time to sufficiently arrest them the second that they are release frd that hospital.
>> and I can speak to a little bit of -- I was going to speak to the discussion we had on this. Is that yes, this was raised as an issue from our side that judges are sometimes called away from the bench to emergency straight folks at the hospital. I know from the city's side what was mentioned is it's really tying up their officers because they have to wait for these folks for extended hours in most cases before they can actually get magistrated and being relieved to go back to the streets. So for them it's officers getting back to the street issue. And if representatives from the city want to come and discuss this, that would be fine, but that's where we kind of landed. And I think we had both kind of agreed, the city and the county, to start working on this issue. I know there were some issues that the sheriff's office had for things we could do from our side. I know the city was agreeable to talking more about this issue, but I think at this point, just at this point in time, I don't think we've actually worked out the details of how to actually make this work and resolve this issue.
>> when does it get brought back up?
>> one of the things that I think was being looked at is there a way, for example, for sheriff's officers to relieve a.p.d. Officers if that was the issue about getting them back to street and was there a way to do that without putting us in the position of taking actual responsibility from a cost standpoint for those folks. And so our county attorney basically brought up an issue that there might be an issue, there might be an ag opinion that could apply here. It wasn't real clear-cut, how it worked out, but that was one of the things that was being looked at right now, and so from the city's side they were like, well, that sounds like an idea that might answer our issues, but we need to talk more about it. There are a lot of things in process right now. There are definitely one of the things I wanted to mention to the court is that you may see something come forward, maybe that is more of a proposal that's worked out between the city and the county because they are going to be continuing to talk about this.
>> have we gotten any information from any of the large urban counties -- jim, this is probably a question for you -- on the constitution alty issue being raised? Do other large urban counties allow magistration of suspects in serious crimes to occur in a medical facility? And I would love to -- I understand that the answer is probably one for executive session, but I have some serious questions about that occurring. It just opens it up for one more thing to blow a case out of the water.
>> how often does it come up?
>> we just now started tracking that. It's more prevalent on the weekends than it is during the week, but we don't have any numbers right now.
>> every weekend or every other weekend?
>> I couldn't really tell you on that.
>> more often than you want to know, judge.
>> we should put a red asterick by this and plan to revisit it in the future. Okay.
>> actually, that theme is a good segue into our next one, for the magistration processing. This is an issue really that kind of came out of the discussions, but I think both the sheriff's office and Austin police department had recognized that because the central booking facility right now operates from 7:00 to 1:00 a.m. And there's kind of a gap in the operation that they're both experiencing some delays and backups in the processing. So one of the things that both sides kind of agree would be a good thing to along at is the idea of having a 24/7 around the clock magistration operation.
>> I thought that was something that we have been talking about for quite some time and I haven't understood why -- I mean, there's nothing new about that.
>> right. And Commissioner, I know there was a study that was done a couple of years ago that had referenced -- it was a pilot that was done, what would happen if we put in 24/7 magistration. And the results much of that study were two fold. One of them -- I though this is a bigger issue for the court and the county is it didn't have a substantial impact on the jail overcrowding issue. One of the things it did show is there was some benefits from the processing and the actual operation of the central booking facility itself. And so what the direction was to city and county staff was to really vet this idea and try to really look at the cost and the benefits associated with this and try to bring something back to Commissioners court and to city council to look at in the future, whenever that can be done. The city and the county had already had a meeting on this actually during our process. We just kind of created a little side meeting for this. And they have already agreed to get back together and revisit this issue again. So it's in process. They're continuing to look at that. So they may be bringing something --
>> my question, though, and like I said, that's nothing new because we've been kicking around that for awhile. And whatever roadblocked us from getting that result or answer to that question as far as how we could end up dealing with that, I don't want the roadblock put in the path of trying to get a good answer to that issue. And again, I’ve never heard anything -- just to put me at a comfort level as far as that particular issue being resolved. I know it's something that we're looking at to both facilitate and move along and I don't want whatever to happen again as a roadblock to that issue.
>> exactly, Commissioner. I think that's one of the things -- there is some things that I think both sides agreed they need to look at. First of all, what are the resources that will be needed from the city's side from like the magistrates, what resources would they need to do this 24/7. From our side, pretile services, having those folks staffed. Both sides agreed we need to go back and look at really what are the resources that would be needed and how can we articulate what those benefits would be to lay that out for your consideration. On page 17, I just want to mention about the city and county use of the existing space in the central booking facility. This is one of the issues that we had raised to look at this and make sure that the allocations are still in line. And there is very specific language in the interlocal agreement about the city and the county allocation space in the central booking facility. It was determined that there wasn't any specific reallocation of space in the central booking facility as it is based on those provisions, but both sheriff's office and Austin police department talked about some of the things they might want to look at down the road. One of them is that I know the sheriff's office is looking at maybe some things with like a central control room and some other things and they wanted to see what the Austin police department's real requirements were for space. Austin police department agreed to kind of look at that and get that information back to the sheriff's office, so again, this is one of those things where we've got everybody in a room talking, which is good because they can kind of coordinate on some of the space planning issues. And so I’ve got no concrete recommendation to give to you at this time, but it was discussed where it was kind of left is that we need to look at if there is any alignment that's needed in the future, but right now there's no immediate, pressing need to realign any of the allocations between the city and the county right now. So you may see something in the future, but nothing at this time impacting the interlocal.
>> having gone through the e.m.s. Interlocal, one of the things that was put in that interlocal is that there was a presumption that there would be an expansion of the system, be it on the city side or the county side related to the number of stations. And therefore that was already hashed out before we got to that point so we knew how to trigger the allocation of expenses. This speaks to the allocation of space, but surely there has to be a presumption that at some point in the interlocal, there will be the need for more space that would have to be built out to somebody's specifications. What does the interlocal say related to the costing of the space, not the allocation of the space, but the shared cost of the space in the same way that we dealt with it up front on e.m.s. So that it was presettled before we got there. There?
>> the interlocal right now, I think it more assigns space than it does really talk about, you know, what's -- really space planning issues. But one of the things I do want to mention, we'll be talking more about this when I get to this recommendation is that we're talking about creating a coordinating committee under this new interlocal agreement and it would include discussions of any of the operational issues, including space. And this body would also be the one to make any recommendations with regards to any space planning issues or any other issues in regard to the central booking facility based on the city and county representation on that. And I’ll mention more the specifications of that, but I think we're creating the mechanism to have the dialogue about what are some of the needs and maybe factor that into the space planning for this.
>> let me put it more in terms of what's the mission statement, the value statement here? Is there a presumption by the city that they would have to pay zero or a certain percentage of the costs? I mean, it's almost like you don't even say it up front that there would be a presumption at the appropriate time that we would talk about the allocation of expenses. I’m not saying what it would be, but I want to know up front that someone has that shared vision that there would be a sharing of expenses, an agreed upon sharing of expenses as opposed to one party enters the contract thinking, well, we'll get to it when we get to it and the other side is thinking they didn't put it down on a piece of paper, so therefore nothing. I’m just trying to get to a shared vision statement that says it will be dealt with at a future point, but there's got to be some presumption that there will be a sharing -- agreed upon sharing of costs. And then you hash it out then. It won't be my problem, but trust me, if it's not put down on a piece of paper, someone will think it's zero because it wasn't put down that there would be any kind of shared cost, however modest.
>> okay. One item I do want to bring up under the operational issues on page 20 is the community liaison position. This position was in the 2000 interlocal agreement, and the position had initially -- had been created to, again, be a liaison with some of the members of the community, some of the surrounding neighborhoods in the central booking facility. I know that there were some issues identified early on, and that position has continued through the interlocal agreement. There were no provisions for funding of this position in the amendment that was done for 2006, so currently there is no direct funding for this position coming back from the city. And through the discussions that we had with the city folks on this issue, it was determined that the sheriff's office still has this position and still has identified the utility of this position for their operations and captain brown can probably speak more to that, but they have already basically taken on this funding in their budget for the central booking facility based upon that and based upon the fact that there isn't a provision that exists right now really for the city to provide direct funding for this position outside of any reimbursement they gave in general for the central booking facility, that we just remove the community liaison position from any subsequent agreement.
>> captain, is this slot filled at this point?
>> yes, it is, Karen maxwell.
>> we do have somebody in there right now?
>> yes.
>> and does that person spend 100% of their time on the issues that have been talked about here in terms of directly with the issues related to central booking and that neighborhood?
>> not 100%.
>> I think that's something that needs to be raised that it could be that it gets rolled into -- I’m not talking about any kind of a dropping of an f.t.e., but it gets rolled into the community outreach program of the sheriff's office so that that person has official permission to be stuff other than that. But that slot was created for a very specific reason because of the ongoing construction projects. That's over with, but we wanted to make sure we had a really good relationship there. I have to question whether that's needed or it can be rolled into a combined effort that not only takes in that role, but all others that the sheriff has.
>> I think that's the way it's heading.
>> sounds like it.
>> I remarked yesterday that I was amazed at how quiet and smooth the transition from the community liaison position to a sheriff's department f.t.e. It had moved.
>> okay.
>> > the next issue is the cost model, page 22. We revisited the cost model with the city because we had done a lot of work on this and we were trying to get the amendment in place for 2006 when somebody was still an employee here. There would be notification of any additional costs that are unforeseen that come up maybe midyear from either the city or the county side afertd side and therewould be provision place that that would be done.
>> page 23, we start with the total county budget direct cost for central booking, which the bulk is the direct cost for the sheriff's office, but that also is the associated costs with filing in the clerk's office. From that number we get -- we make an adjustment for the cost -- the city costs associated with the magistration services and adjusted for constituent cost with the identification services. And then we had initially put in an adjustment for the direct costs that the county has associated with the prisoner release process. We had 19 staff that actually handle the release of prisoners and it was determined that that's a post magistration service that statutorily we're obligated to provide. We really can't ask the city for reimbursement on that. Based on discussions with pbo, bill had mentioned that pbo is considering moving the release staff out of the central booking budget item altogether, so what we're planning to look at doing is readvising this to just take out that adjustment because they're taking it out of the budget altogether. That would have no change in the resulting cost reimbursement for the city, but it's just something that we can remove I think for simplicity's sake based on my discussions with bill. So that geghts us to an adjusted budget for central booking. The city multiplier would be the most recent fiscal year of actual data that we have with regards to the number of city prisoner bookings versus the total number of bookings and running through this fy '07 scenario if we were to put this in place next year, that would be fy 2005, that we would have a full complete year of data that we could plug into that. That would equal our city reimbursement to the county. This is the very last page in your backup packet that you had received. Bill had written up an expense analysis running through the scenario of the cost model. We tried to use the best numbers that we had at this point in time and I definitely want to mention that the numbers may change a little bit here and there, but this is just the best information that we had at this time. Running through this real quick to give you an idea, the total budgetary cost in the fy '06 budget is 8.5 million. That's about the fourth line down. Then we have the direct filing and that would be the direct expense for the county to 8.6 -- 8,697,121. So 8.6, 8.7 million. Skip some of that information and come down to the yellow highlighted areas where we talk about the city expenses that would be the adjusted costs. And they have the cost for magistration, magistrate support and planning and analysis cost, their id unit costs and that would be 1.3 million that there would be adjustment for. That would get us to the 5.7. And this model had assumed that we also had to take out the release staff and that adjustment is made down at the next set of highlighted boxes. That's where the release staff adjustment is made. And that gets us to the adjusted amount of 6.3. That gets us to that net amount of 4.6 million. I do want to mention that this analysis had assumed the multiplier would be a five-year average, and what we had discussed with the city is using the most recent year of data, so actually the difference in amount that we would be receiving from this year as opposed to next year would not be 223,000 additional, but 256,000 additional. And we can provide an updated analysis for you, but that's --
>> how do we apply to -- who do we suspect to apply the formula and generate these numbers for us annually?
>> that would be a function of the coordinating committee, and then it would be a function of -- this is just the vision that we had based on the discussion. The coordinating committee that we're going to establish that I’ll be talking about a little bit, but then also brought to the court based on the respective city manager from the city side I assume and then from our side, the criminal justice coordinator, whoever would be the designee that the court would have to oversee the contract itself.
>> okay.
>> a lot of the discussion with regards to the cost model, what's working, what's not working, those types of things, would happen within that coordinating committee itself.
>> one of the things that when we first -- when we looked at this -- this is not the first time we have looked at this. We've been around the block a few times with these interlocals. But in all the interlocals and the ones we first got into and then the one we're looking at now to make some kind of improvement, the question comes over and over again when can -- and how much will this affect the arresting officers who end upbringing the persons in to be processed, magistrated, and then the amount of time that's actually expended with them going through the process, relieved of that situation as quickly as possible it and then returned to the streets where they could actually take care of the business at hand as far as protecting the public and not be captured in the situations, administrative functions or whatever other functions that we have talked about in these interlocals. With all these things that we're looking at here, the new way of trying to get a better service, what is the formula, what is the application to end up reducing the time that an officer -- whether it be a.p.d., sheriff, d.p.s. Or whomever, what is the amount of time to return the officers back on the street to protect the public?
>> Commissioner, that's a very good question and that's something that came up several times in our discussions. I know it's a priority issue for the Austin police department and the law enforcement agencies, including our on own to get back to the street as possible. That's a segue into my next issue to talk about. We looked at what data, what information do we need to start capturing on a regular basis so we can track exactly those types of things. And one of the data points that we're going to start trying to capture is how long it's taking officers from the point they come into the sally port to the time they leave, how long is it taking them so we can monitor is that and see if some of the things we're doing are making a difference. I think that's the starting point for us is that we just haven't compiled and shared a lot of this information in a coordinated way between the city and the county. So we're going to work on establishing some of the data that we're going to be responsible for sharing. Then from that point the next phase may be to develop some performance targets and actual performance measures along those lines.
>> that's been a challenge to I think our law enforcement, but also to the governing bodies that have to oversee and not only do what we're doing here today, but also spending money, taxpayers' money on providing a service, but also taking that service off the street where they're really needing a lot of attention as far as protecting the public. There's still a challenge now and it's still a challenge. And I just want to know when are we going to get to that point whereby whatever we're doing, we're modifying interlocals, are we doing all these things, hospital situation as far as folks spending time in the hospitals, as far as magistration is concerned and all the of the other things that have been brought up. I need to get there some kind of way to let me know that when an arresting officer come in to book a person, how much time does it take for them to do that and also return to the streets to protect the public. And that's a very legitimate question. And I still haven't got any good answer to it yet. I’m still looking for an answer. Thank you.
>> michael, I’m sorry, one more thing related to -- so I have a better understanding of what is all this supposed to cost and for people to say I can make the appropriate assumptions. Everybody wants to know what's the bottom line. So as we're trying to figure out and the city of Austin is trying to figure out what do we plug in for the '07 budget, my question is this, most of our governmental entities do not make any kind of salary decisions until the August-september time frame and sometimes there can be a change to the positive between what goes into somebody's preliminary budget, whether it comes from pbo or from the city manager and what a city council or Commissioners court finally decides on. As long as it's equally being handled, then there's no harm, no foul in terms of people getting pay raises, but what we can't have is that somebody's pay raises get plugged in in terms of their direct expenses are picked up in the same year that they're happening and you don't have that happening on the other governmental entity's side, no matter whose side it is, so that you're never making up for it. As long as everybody is equal in terms of we've picked up to the best of our ability the anticipated pay raises for rank and file and any kind of pops/a.p.d. Salaries, whatever that is. We just need to appropriately count for that because sometimes you don't know what the direct budgeted expense is until you're getting down the very end when our auditor and the counterparts over at the city are trying to figure out what's this going to cost, what do we put in the budget? Kind of like simultaneous action is happening. And it's not fair that somebody can plug in their numbers and the others don't get to plug it in until a year or there was a severe differential between the two, which is also unfair to whatever side it happens to. And you never get to make it up. Help. How do we deal with that?
>> well, I think that's what we were trying to get to with trying to share as much information as possible as early in the process as possible. I know it's one of the things that we had talked about on the interlocal side last year. And I think that's what we're trying to build here is some capacity to talk about any anticipated chris that will be coming, whether it be salary or anything else and try to regularly share that information because again you're exactly right, there's the budget process and the numbers can tweak here, change there, but as long as we're sharing the information we have a good idea of what's coming down the pike. So I think that's what we tried to build here is some capacity to do that. Have those provisions in place that we have a duty owed basically to each other is to share good information.
>> is there some thought, because I know you guys are going to get back together to get this locked down to a final agreement. And that is that there's a cutoff date. That there is a date that everybody has to report in their best information, and no harm, no foul, if it changes after that, but you've got to get that stuff in because it's not just about salaries, it's about benefits. Because we've had that fall off the radar screen as well. Health insurance costs on both the city and county side can swing greatly in just one year and we want to be fair to all sides. But everyone's got to go through open enrollment so we do have at least health insurance costs locked down much earlier, kind of in the July time frame, simply because you've got to be able to go out and talk to your employees about it and people make positive decisions in time for open enrollment.
>> I do want to mention I’ve had some discussions with folks at pbo and in the auditor's office and they had mentioned that concern to me about we needed to lock down that type of time line, especially to get some of the budget and the revenue information together. So that's probably one of those things we need to just specify in the follow-up discussions is those deadlines that we both need from the city and the county side. And one thing I was looking at immediately is that when we talk about some of our next steps past this is when we talk about nailing down the specifications on the on cost model language we probably need to do that as quickly as possible for exactly that reason.
>> do we need to mull over this a week and then give feedback? I notice that there are some suggested time lines here, the first of which is may 1, I think I recall seeing, right? May 1. But it may help for us to kind of mull over this one week, have it back on the agenda next week to provide some feedback. There are two or three other issues that we ought to put on with this one to get the court to address next week. The other thing is that in terms of the county representative on the coordinating committee, it would help to oi efor -- for us to see probably specific positions or persons that need to be on there to represent Travis County. And so we can start thinking about that. I imagine the sheriff probably has people that really need to be on there from the sheriff's office and carol, maybe we ought to think more about who else needs to be on there to complement the sheriff's representatives. And I guess the city will get together and come up with city members on there.
>> judge? Is it possible for any other urban county that may be using something similar to what we're doing, to find out how much the average time it takes an arresting officer to make an arrest, go through central booking and then return to the street for duty? I’m really concerned about that. And I think a lot of other folks are. I know the arresting officers are and of course the public is also interested. And I’d just like to -- maybe if we have any backup to see what that information is, I think we need something good to look at as far as what other counties are doing.
>> okay. Let me see if we can generate that. Thank you. There's a lot of information, but what you just went over, you basically covered the big items.
>> I covered the big things and alluded to the other things.
>> so for the Commissioners court, in terms of figuring out exactly where we stand in terms of a response to the recommendations, we can take the report we just went over, look at them, some we may agree with, others we may want to discuss further, others we may not agree with, but I think that's the best way for us to get to the next place, okay? The other question is who will actually refine the recommendations for Travis County, help put together the specific contract in addition to the county attorney's office and who has been workogthis in the county attorney's office. Jim?
>> judge, one thing. I would hope we could have further discussion next week related to the time line. I am really concerned that there is two and a half months between when we basically say, okay, go young lawyers, go forth and get this down on a piece of paper. If it's given two and a half months, it will take two and a half months. I think that needs to be a whole lot shorter in terms of a time frame there and that all people have to just get it done because you also have to take into account that we all have very different schedules when we get to budget. I know we meet 52 weeks out of the year, but that is not what happens over at the city. And I think getting this to the city council and the Commissioners court August 15th, that would probably work for us, but it is not going to work for the city council. They are well into their budget discussions by then and they are finished before we are in terms of budget. So I think we've got to be much more aggressive to get this thing done and presented to the appropriate body because September 15th for finalization of this is much too late for susan to properly certify this for revenue for our own purposes.
>> well, I can have a discussion with city staff on that and also talk to maybe some of the county staff and then talk to some city folks as well maybe from what appropriate time lines as well.
>> two and a half months is --
>> mr. Mckee and mr. Garza may be authorized to sign this for the city council. [ laughter ]
>> only if the city council gives them permission to do so. [ laughter ]
>> we'll have it back on next week.
>> thank you very much. We'll try and be more helpful next week.
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, April 5, 2006 10:34 AM