Travis County Commissioners Court
June 13, 2006
Item 19
19 is to consider and take appropriate action on whether to charge municipalities for sheriff's office dispatch and related services.
>> greg hamilton, Travis County sheriff. I知 here today to ask the Commissioners to consider billing the municipalities for the services that we provide as far as communications is concerned.
>> sheriff, could you give us maybe just a little background on what we're discussing here today? I mean, we basically understand some of these things here, but as far as the listening audience is concerned, and since you have a handle on exactly what we're talking about, I think if you just maybe gave us a little insight on what we're actually talking about as far as dispatch service and how it works in with the municipalities as far as those services are concerned.
>> I知 going to defer that to our dispatch supervisor, chris wallace.
>> thank you.
>> chris wallace. Basically we provide full dispatch services, call taking and radio dispatch services for several municipalities within Travis County. That would be Bee Caves, Jonestown, manor, Mustang Ridge, rolling wood and Sunset Valley. And we answer the 911 calls and enter incidents into our cad system and dispatch their units and monitor their status from the time they're dispatched to the call until the call is completed. A short way of putting it. We also enter their missing people and run queries for them and things like that.
>> so let me throw something out here and maybe you can help me out. Let's say you have a municipality that has their own law enforcement in place and stuff like that; however, during the course of a day they may have dispatched personnel to deal with calls, but then after a certain length of time of the day, that particular service may not be available. Is that when the sheriffs or the dispatch services office through the sheriff's department take over or is that just always an ongoing thing 24/7.
>> this is a 24 hour service we provide.
>> okay. Regardless of -- okay.
>> all the municipalities we dispatch for, we provide a full 24-hour service.
>> Commissioner Sonleitner.
>> I know that's where we've gone on on central booking, it's where we're already at on e.m.s. It kind of gets us away from your share of the system. My question -- and I致e done a really good job of articulating, kind of like e.m.s., it was a friendly little relationship, but now it's creating a major impact and we need to have some good discussion. Are we talking about letting them know that what we are requesting of them is a percentage of the costs as we know them today or the percentage of where I think rick was trying to head us, and that is that we are really understaffed here and therefore we ought to be asking for them to pay a percentage of what are the true costs, and some of that needs to be borne by Travis County because some of that impact there is ours and some of that impact is because of the small cities.
>> we were suggesting -- this was precipitated by an '07 funding request for more dispatch staff. All of the models show that we have about half the staff we should have in trying to find funding resources this is an option we want to bring to the court is to help our cause.
>> the other thing too is wanting to be sure -- I知 trying to be respectful of the Sunset Valley situation, bee cave. I think they're on the cusp of deciding whether this is something that they continue on with us, and this would be the cost. Or if they have enough time to say, do you know what, we may want to go our own way like Pflugerville did and know that there are advantages and disadvantages to not being on the big system. So I知 trying to be respectful of giving everybody enough head's up time to pick one, but if it's not going to be the one, then the work load is going to go elsewhere and we need to stick by that. So I知 trying to get us to a good place, sheriff, and are looking to see what y'all's recommendation is as to -- rather than just say we want them to pay for dispatch, do you have a specific thing in mind as to what you want them to pay?
>> I don't think we put those numbers, but I would like to see them pay for the twam cost.
>> so right now if we're understaffed, it's basically the percentage of whatever our current costs are, and if decisions are made in the budget that augment that, they would pay the same percentage, but of a bigger piece of pie.
>> that's correct. The numbers we ran in trying to come up with this was our current cost to personnel in ctec, our cost to be in ctec, which is just shy of $2 million, and then breaking out the number of cad calls that we have, and then everybody paying the percentage of their use. And the screen I have is how that would work out for calendar year '05.
>> has the municipalities, I guess,, on this particular item, those particular municipalities that that may impact on, on what decision does this court deem, been notified to let them know that the court would be considering -- is considering what is being requested of us today.
>> I know that there's been conversation that's been going on over a year or since I致e been here there's been conversation. And rick confirms that, yes, they have been notified.
>> I met with the mayor, city managers and/or chiefs of all the cities, except for Sunset Valley, and sun Sunset Valley was here two weeks ago when we had the work session. So all of them know this is on the table. In fact, for this fiscal year we're in now, manor and Bee Caves is expected to pay for the year we're in now, only weren't ready to do that, that's why we brought it to the table for this year.
>> they are willing --
>> they were expecting to write a check to us for fy '06 and we're talking about fy '07 now. Now, the amounts they're willing to write checks for varies between what I知 asking and what they're thinking.
>> have there been any municipalities that have decided to take this beyond and said to heck with Travis County dispatch, we'll do our own?
>> during the work session, Bee Caves indicated they were thinking about that option. I知 not sure what their plans are or where they're headed, but everybody recognizes they can't stand up for their own sister for what it would cost us to do it.
>> and the compromise position would be kind of where we are with the parcel rate related to tax collection and that is that we are ramping up closer to true cost of service, but knowing that a big jump like that is kind of hard for another governmental entity that if we can aim for 75% of the cost recovery and then knowing that they can ramp it up in their budget every year to catch up, but I知 comfortable with getting something rather than nothing. And if we can't get 100% because it's a little bit of a sticker shock, I値l settle for 75 knowing that the next year we should be asking for closer to 80 and the next year 85, and you can ramp it up to cost of service. I think something is better than nothing. And right now nothing ain't working for anybody.
>> I missed the work session. We talked about this, although we've had some pretty in-depth discussions about this and I知 very supportive of going to these folks and telling them that this is their share that they justifiably need to be doing. What is the response we have given to people to say that a big part of our taxes that we pay, because that's always the first thing you generally hear from people. What is our county rebuttal?
>> I can tell you what my rebuttal is.
>> I知 willing to take that.
>> the county was here before the cities and the city came into existence after that and they're the ones doing the double taxation, not us.
>> well, if you're going to buy their argument that dispatch is something that the county ought to be paying for, why aren't they making the argument that their entire police department ought to be paid for by the county? And the answer is when they become incorporated cities as we discuss with them as they become incorporated cities, that means that they take on a whole lot of responsibilities that they got for free when they were part of the county, but they're going to have to pay for, including the road maintenance, yes, having a police department. And they can either get into a contract like village of the hills to get their needs taken care of or they can start their own department, but the free ride ends when they take on the responsibility of being a new city. Read the government code.
>> I think the key is to get this thing budgeted. Even if we do -- (indiscernible). I think we need to send a clear message that this is something that we're going to do. And if they need to take it in a couple or three bites, then we might consider that, but we need to get towards full recovery. Now, I do expect us to be able to sit down and articulate very distinctly when you start talking about $2,729,000. If I知 one of those folks, if I say I致e got 3.4% of it, I want ipt to make sure I know what I知 paying for out of that. And I think that's something we do need to do with them. But we do need to move towards that. If you took everybody out, we still need to grow our system because it doesn't equate to 12 or 13%. So given that we are so whoa woefullyunder staffed at this stage, this can only help us. I知 willing to go to whatever municipality called my office, which I know -- a couple of them have already indicated that they'll be hearing from us.
>> you'll get four of them.
>> I知 willing to work with them and say let's find out how you take this thing on, but we are I think as a county, we need to send a message that this is something that we justifiably -- and it's the right thing to do. So I知 supportive of it. We have contacted them, I know that, and probably have some ongoing conversations, if there's somebody that you feel -- I know that, for example, Sunset Valley has always said that they didn't -- said that they didn't want to do it. And let's sit down. I知 more than happy to go with you, sheriff, two or three of us go and say here's where we're coming from. But I think we need to have our numbers in line and I think we need to show them what potentially this thing is going to go to given that we are going to try to staff up, you know, our need so that they can see whenever they're talking to their council and budget people that they can see the anticipation of this being a ratchetted up number and having to stay ratchetted up just like we have to.
>> that's a good comment, Commissioner. And I guess looking at that budget, all of us have a budget that we must go through. And it appears to me that if we have talked with these municipalities, if y'all have talked to the municipalities and said look, this is what we're considering, it appears to me that someone would have been taking notes and say, look, our budget process is coming up and that's something that we need to consider during our budget process. And I don't know if that is the case or not, but it appears that that's something that should have been notated. And if some of them have already indicated that they're willing to write a check and get -- and help us out in this regard, that's something else too, though. But after all of this has been said and done, I feel that there has to be some time line as far as when we want to do this. We're continuing to suffer with the shortfall in our staffing to deal with the dispatch services that Travis County render, and it just appears to me there's only so long we can take a beating like this. So how long do we want to take a whopping by not having -- being properly staffed when we can offset that with incoming fees that will help us in the long run? So is there a place where we can land on this as far as when we were ready to start moving forward to make sure that the fees and all these other kind of things have been brought in to help offset.
>> one of the things I would say is that we probably needed that done yesterday.
>> yesterday?
>> but one of the things that I would suggest is that I know that these entities knew of the way we felt and what we were going to present to you all, but we didn't know where the Commissioners stood on this particular issue. I think it's important that we get together and have meaningful dialogue now to talk about it and let them know that we are serious about this particular issue and that we do have your support. But I agree with you, I think that we need to sit down and have some conversation with the powers that be and come up with a figure and with a timetable in making this happen.
>> with a yes vote, which I値l make the motion that we put in motion this.
>> and I second it.
>> and I do think that we need to calculate what we anticipate that we're going to need. And of course, we don't know that we're going to get the dollars to add all the people that we need, but we need to let them know here's what we're going to do. And you're right, we need to do that immediately so that they can put it in their budget. If nothing else, I think we need to send a clear message that you need to at least go to your people and go to the page that shows that if you're 1.9, then that's $51,000 so that you'll will -- so that they will know kind of where to start with their folks.
>> I think with your yes vote that it sends a clear message that y'all are in support of this, and we will start dialogue. With these different entities.
>> the motion I heard was for the county to start charging municipalities that we provide dispatch services, and we ask the sheriff to meet with the appropriate law enforcement representatives from the affected entities and report back to the court at the appropriate time. We're aiming for this year's budget process.
>> and that will begin in 2007.
>> yes.
>> fiscal year '07.
>> that's the motion. Seconded by Commissioner Davis. Discussion? All in favor? That motion carries unanimously.
>> thank you.
>> thank y'all very much.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, June 14, 2006 9:58 AM