Travis County Commissioners Court
July 11, 2006
Item 6
Number 6 is to receive presentation of fy '07 budget parameters.
>> christian smith, planning and budget with leroy nellis. The purpose of this item is to give you a briefing for the preliminary budget which we will fine in nine days. We have received budget requests from all of the county agencies. We have met with those agencies, we have developed budget write-ups and are at the last stage of putting together the preliminary budget. The only thing that really is still outstanding is the third revenue estimate which we will be receiving early next week. All of our numbers are based on the second revenue estimate. We believe that we have such good open, collaborative communication with the auditor's office that we have a good sense of what the third revenue estimate will be; however, one never knows until one sees it. Based on data from the appraisal district, the preliminary budget quarterback balanced -- can be balanced at the effective tax rate, which would be currently estimated at 45.16 cents. The current tax rate is 49.93 cents. That's a four and three-quarter cent decrease. I would hope that that would be bell lowed. That Travis County is decreasing the tax rate and indeed would be at this point based on tacd numbers result in the average homesteads seeing a small reduction in the amount of taxes paid, in spite of the average homestead going from 203,000 to $223,000. Homestead goes up, tax rate goes down, the result is a small decrease. We are planning to have the reserves continue to be healthy, unallocated reserve at 11 percent. The allocated reserve we thought last week that we could keep it at two and a half to three million. It may need to be a little bit less than two and a half million depending upon some little jiggles with 3.2 million in '06. We have other reserves for capital, out of county inmates, pharmacy, annualization of midyear expenses, records imaging. There's a special opportunity for the court to decide the future of the records imaging division, and we set up a reserve so at least you have the money to go forward if you wish. And then the -- our favorite, the facts computer reserve as we enter our second decade of endeavoring to implement the integrated justice system. The sheriff's office, we have -- we are expecting to have a little over $2 million for pharmaceuticals, medical costs, along with a new communication staff, medical screening, central booking. We've had a very good discussion with the sheriff's office leadership and we believe that we have a good meeting of the minds in terms of the sheriff's office highest priorities. That doesn't mean they won't want a budget hearing to discuss their needs, but I do not believe we are at a point where their key priorities are not being met. We have the new criminal court which you authorized will cost over a million dollars. 17 and a half f.t.e. Hal of those are in the district attorney's office. A variety of mental health initiatives in the sheriff's office as well as for mental health screening in central booking, pretrial services in the mental health public defender. Balcones canyon land transfers, a little over a million dollars increase for the total transfer of $5.9 million. Utilities are going up. We have money for that along with interlocals for the city of Austin for both e.m.s. And health and human services. We've got funds in the preliminary budget for new park staffing, a little over half a million dollars as well as two teams in the county attorney's trial division and criminal intake of also a little over half a million dollars. The total increase for all the constables is just under a million dollars. A large part of that is for writ execution teams in each constable's office to meet various legal restrictions and compliance requirements along with bailiffs and a warrant team. Medical examiner will have additional resources to continue the goal of meeting the standards in the future. Justice of the peace --
>> christian, are the medical examiner's office, is that 222,000 above the adjusted '06 budget?
>> yes, that is above all the resources that the Commissioners court has already inserted into the medical examiner's budget. So this is on top of the budget target. It's additional resources. And I'm not sure that they -- they may or may not wish a budget hearing. Justices was peace include a little over $400,000 primarily for collection clerk and other new staff based on revenue. We've got existing maintenance programs for computer systems of almost $800,000 along with six f.t.e. For information system staff to keep up with the explosion in information technology. Criminal justice initiatives are just under $700,000. Most of which deals with additional detention bed staffing. Our favorite of indigent attorneys fees will be going up along with additional maintenance and custodial staff along with new space. Those are the primary items that are in the preliminary budget at this point in time. We may jiggle the numbers a little bit, but we feel fairly confident that that will be there.
>> do you have any idea of how many departments wish to have a hiring?
>> we're still compiling that. I think in the 13 years I've been here we will have fewer didn'ts asking for budget hearings with fewer number of hours than we ever have in the past. We have departments that in the past have always had budget hearings who are now saying no, we're satisfied, but there are also good public policy reasons why a department might wish to come to you and say everything is okay, but we want to talk to you about the future. Or there are other departments that are going to say we're satisfied with the preliminary budget, but there's two or three things that we really need for you to be aware of that are not in that preliminary budget. We are going to do something we'd like for the first time, and with your concurrence, and hopefully -- this is not an action item for today. But with your concurrence we would like to do something that hopefully will make the budget hearings go much more smoothly. In the past as you know you've got a big black book, and that is a very big, thick, rich document. And take a department like the sheriff's office, the write-up for the sheriff's office might be 140 pages. The sheriff might be wanting to talk to you about 20 of those 140 pages. Rather than have you wade through all 140 pages, what we are thinking about with your con clurns is to -- concurrence is to pluck out the 20 that the sheriff's office or any other office wish to talk about, put it on a separate color, yellow, and then talk to the office in advance saying what do you want to talk to the Commissioners court about, get the topic and then give you the excerpt from the big write-up so that you can focus on that which is desired to be talked about as opposed to having to go through all 140 pages or in the case of another office it might have a 10 or 15 page write-up, the department might only want to talk about one or two pages. That scheme that we're thinking about should make the budget hearing process a little easier.
>> that doesn't preclude that we'll be looking at a cola when we're looking in here when you have compensation and benefits?
>> the intent of this is to provide you with the resources that are available for you to decide how to appropriate them. We have developed a scheme for how to determine what a compensation reserve would be. If the Commissioners court wishes to have it all be cola, if the Commissioners court wishes it to be all based on a performance or some mix thereof. There are reasons to do both. We are not wading into one or the other, but I believe your human resources folk are going to suggest you reward based on performance, but it doesn't mean you wouldn't want to do a mix. Our intent is to provide an idea of what the size would be that's affordable housing. We have $10 million in the preliminary budget. We believe we can stick to that, at least nine if not 10 million for a combination of health benefits at almost two and a half million dollars, retirement benefits at $1.3 million, and then a compensation reserve which we think can be in the four and a half or more range, and that would be what we're calling a three legged stool. We have green circled employees that you know who are just below minimum. We have compression employees where various departments have come in and said there's a compression issue and then we have the rank and file. We developed a methodology where we in essence tried to figure out how big a reserve should we have if we want a two and a half or three percent performance based pay for rank and file. And we in essence said, well, if you get an increase for green circle or an increase for compression, then you would be ineligible for performance based pay. Or if the court wishes to make that a cola, make it a cola. We said then also the -- since the amount of resources were so great for green circle and compression, I believe it totalled four million dollars. We said let us implement that over two years because it was such a large amount of need. So we then said, well, if you are hired in the last six months, you would not be eligible for a performance based pay. Using -- or cola for that matter. Using those basic principles, we then said how much would a compensation reserve need to be if you had, say, three percent for rank and file and then green circle and performance -- and a green circle and compression people outside of that group who would be -- have their increases implemented over multiple years. That methodology then resulted in the size of the compensation reserve, which we believe at this point is going to be four and a half or more million at a three percent level for rank and file. We do not know if that will hold. It will depend on what comes out of the third revenue estimate. That's a long answer to a simple question.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 12, 2006 10:47 AM