Travis County Commissioners Court
May 22, 2007
Item 32
32. Consider and take appropriate action on interlocal agreements providing dispatch services with the following cities: 1. City of Sunset Valley; 2. City of Mustang Ridge; 3. City of manor; 4. City of Jonestown; and 5. City of rollingwood. What these contracts provide is roughly 50% as we approved on the budget process. And by approving this contract we basically said that we did indicate during the budget process, too, that we would gradually increase until we reached 100%. So do we want to do 60% this year or 75%?
>> michael
>> [indiscernible] with the Travis County sheriff's office. Judge and Commissioners court, that question is probably something that you may want to wait and have us come back to on. We are currently speaking with hobby and his shop on updating the figures and certainly the costs associated with it. The intent of the court last time was to go with approximately 50% the first year, 75% the second, the third year phase-in at 100%. Certainly your discretion and whatever you would like to see happen we will try to facilitate and get that done. The reason that I asked we may need a clarification on exactly what the court's intent on some of the terminology. The contracts call for basically recovery of costs associated with personnel. We ran into some issues in doing these contracts as -- exactly what that means. Because we run into personnel with benefits, without benefits, benefits to include overtime, and -- and when we calculate those costs so -- so we have a meeting set for next week to hammer some of that out so that we are all on the same page within Travis County government. And could hopefully have that back to you within a week or so afterwards.
>> move that we approve the five contracts before us.
>> second.
>> we
>> [indiscernible] that second part of the motion. Discussion in all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. In my view we ought to indicate some intention. Our intention stated during the budget process was 75%. We can work on defining your agreement on exactly what we mean by a total reimbursement or total cost, et cetera, so that requires a little bit more additional work. We understand that. But I think the sooner we let the other jurisdictions know hey we are looking at 75%, let's try to figure out 75% of what so we can take that back to the court, I mean, because I'm assuming third under their, started their budget processes same as we?
>> that's correct. Some of them have a little longer time frame or shorter time frame, but they are about where we're at.
>> if nothing else it would be as a reminder during this last budget process, 50 this year, 75 the next. There may be rope for us to reduce -- reason for us to reduce the amount that the 75% applies to. I think we ought to be flexible and reasonable when it comes to that.
>> certainly your discretion. Judge, I'm just now coming into this with them. The reason why I'm involved in it is some of these same cities have requested coming on the mdc, mobile data system. I have indicated to the sheriff's office I would be more than happy to assist with the dispatching agreement because it would make sense rather than having multiple agreements. If they want to come in with mobile data, they may want to merge that with dispatching, they may not. Again I have to see what's happening on the overon the dispatch side. Overall costs may be a totally different formula, scenario, based on converge knowledge those two. Converging those two. We will know more once we have our meetings, I will be happy to assist them as I can.
>> I think rick whitehead, right, was working on those conversations with all of the different entities?
>> thaerk, he's no long -- that's correct, he's no longer doing that task. Captain paul --
>> does he have some of the background information that --
>> he's been supplied with the entire amount of information that was presented to the court through the various hearings that we had.
>> it was my office that was integrally involved with this, along with whitehead and a number of other folks. And the -- the challenge that we have is getting buy-in from what true costs are and what these communities are willing to sign-off on. Because all of them have had this free so far. And I mean we did get them to a spot once we got, you know, everybody settled down, they didn't think that they were getting messed over, where they were willing to come in, they did sign-off on some things, on some figures, we did indicate that we were going to do roughly this 50% of what it would be, if we gave them a definitive amount. We even got something back to the people later where the amounts were smaller than what they had and there was resistance from there because what they had gone out and done and had taken back to their council, all of their respective folks and gotten signoff on that. I mean, you know, you would think that somebody would say okay well it's less than
>> [indiscernible], sign me up for that. Well, that didn't happen. So we -- you know, we kind of pulled back and said okay fine. What we had published, what you took to your folks that roughly is a 50%, knowing that we are going to consider the next few years ratcheting up each year until we get to -- you know, full recovery, but again full recovery, I mean, we might as well get ready for a little bit of a wrestling match because there are some folks out there, I mean,, you know, and I -- I know that we react to things like this at times when somebody comes in and says well we are just going to try to -- predicate this cost on this percentage and we are going to wait a minute, I mean, you have some sunk costs, some things in there that I don't think that we ought to be paying for because you have to pay for those things already. Point is that we do have some work ahead of us. But -- some of the communities even said you know what, we are going to go off and maybe contract with Pflugerville or contract with other folks, I think we have since here maybe we are not going to do that. The point is we are going to have to sit down with an executive manager in this spot, full notes from my office on exactly what happened, we will be able to bring, you know, danny, if danny is not already up to speed on this thing but all of them are aware that the price is going to go up. Now we just have to make sure that they pie in on okay here is how we are using the price modeling. I think that we will be okay. I mean not because we don't have work ahead of us, but I think that we are in good shape moving forward that way.
>> again that's why my recommendation would be we come back to the court with -- I could draw you up half a dozen different models based on what type of costs you would like to recover, whether they include infrastructure or they don't or whether they are just straight personnel. The contracts that you -- that you have just approved were basically kind of the low end of this. Strictly personnel and Travis County is bearing additional costs with it. It's not a true cost of recovery that you see before you. We can give you some choices out there and basically the -- the court look at what you would like to see recovered out of these two --
>> I don't see any choices, we need to see what they think about the choices.
>> you bet.
>> in the end I guess if I were one of the smaller cities, my first question would be what would it cost me to perform this service for my entity? And I think if most of them put the pencil to that, they will see there are some costs that will surface that right now they may not know about because we eat them. But if they were to do this themselves they would have to foot that cost to some extent. But I think we ought to be fair and reasonable because it makes all of the sense in the world to promote cooperation and collaboration. At the same time, though, I think we need to be fair to ourselves and themselves about the cost sharing. This won't be a money maker for us. But we ought to move toward, you know, reimbursing Travis County more of the cost.
>> and again your honor we have in several models previous and other cities such as the city of bee cave, we assisted them in establishing their agency. Their choice is to do this on their own as the sheriff's office, we are fully committed to assisting them in any way to achieve that goal.
>> these are partners, right?
>> you said it, as long as they are at the table in that back and forth conversation about, you know, how are you really coming up with these costs because, you know, bottom line you have reasonable people they have got financial people back when you take it back, you can justify it, they may not like it, but they understand. We learned a lesson versus the cram council method, saying here's what you owe us.
>> yeah.
>> they may say 25% is fine, I mean 75% is fine, it should be this number right here, here are the reasons why. We may agree with them.
>> we have been very transparent with our methodology.
>> our services we may have to pull into this soon. As soon as we start the discussions.
>>
>> [indiscernible] interesting to see.
>> we have had conversations with those cities, that is a city that is having some exponential growth that certainly has different challenges than some of the other entities that we deal with.
>> they were one in particular that thought they may want to go to Pflugerville. I have since heard they may be rethinking that.
>> we did vote on the contracts right.
>> I don't think so.
>> yeah, we did.
>> just a statement of intention, which we approved on the budget process, still there. Let's goart.
>> we will have -- lets negotiate.
>> we will have something back to you shortly.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 8:00 AM