Travis County Commissioners Court
July 24, 2007
Citizens communication
Citizens communication is next. Three citizens have signed up to -- to speak. This item gives residents an opportunity to address the Commissioners court on any matter not on the agenda. First -- first speaker is
>> [indiscernible] bret followed by alex leo.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners.
>> good morning.
>> on behalf of the Travis County sheriff's law enforcement association and corrections association, we wanted to address the court today concerning our pop scale. I placed before you an amended proposal for our pop scale. And in '93-'94 the pay scale was designed to accomplish two objectives to provide employees of the Travis County sheriff's office a career ladder structure. And -- and a mechanism for horizontal movement through the pay scale based on
>> [indiscernible] pops adjustments in the past made on inconsistent and a variety of different criteria. One of the goals of our proposal is to establish a reliable and consistent method for defining the market for the sheriff's officers and applying these methods when terming salaries and other related issues. The sheriff's law enforcement association and tcso contracted with independent consultants to conduct a survey of salaries. That our organization can -- can move through. And these positions that were surveyed were done with departments through central Texas. The survey results show that some of the pops positions are 20% below average than other public safety organizations. Our sheriff's -- salaries should be based on a weighted average being paid to the Austin police department and the -- georgetown police department, hays county sheriff's office and Williamson county sheriff's office. The time frame that it takes to reach markets in our positions need to be adjusted to reflect that of other organizations and the pay ranges, the percentages difference between minimums and maximums in the range of the grade should remain the same. We feel that our proposal is an analysis and justification for what we are asking the court to do. The last adjustment made the pop in 2005 to 2006 the adjustment was across the board and not related to any market analysis of the positions. The identifies in the plan do not have a clear understanding of the criteria used for making the adjustments to our pay scale. We feel one of the most important decisions for establishing a competitive and fair compensation plan is defining, the conviction of irrelevant labor market. And we feel that the relative labor market for the sheriff's office is the Austin police department and georgetown police department hays county sheriff's office and the Williamson county sheriff's office. We surveyed positions in our
>> [indiscernible] by paying market salaries we feel it will allow the deputies to reside in the county which will support our share of successful community policing programs.
>> [buzzer sounding] further promotes the employee morale and assist uses in efforts to recruit, maintain qualified employees. Also the county has a policy of compensating other employees according to their market. We feel that the pops schedule should be no different. To give you one quick example, we have a 16 year parole sergeant who I'm sorry we have a 16 year sergeant who is over our criminal investigative division and a 16 year patrol officer with the Austin police department makes more money than him. Also, shoot court adopt our pay scale, judge, I'm trying to wrap this up, we would not be approaching the court again for three years. That this -- that this adjustment to the pop scales would be good until fiscal year 11. We are not asking for parity pay with the Austin police department and we are asking that our market is adjusted for actual average wages in our centralized region. Table 2 indicates four other entities to which we compare? Travis County sheriff's officers? The data itself may be found where. Too we also have that.
>> we do have the data, absolutely. We can provide that to h.r.
>> I did ask human resources to take a look at the -- at the underlying data.
>> we have our consultant here, we can get that information to h.r.
>> the sooner the better we need to make the comparisons for it.
>> okay.
>> mr. Leo?
>> judge, good morning Commissioners. My name is alex leo, I'm with the Travis County sheriff's office association and a few things that I would like to add on top of what they already mentioned is that as you know we've experienced a -- a -- a -- an ongoing vacancy issue in the corrections bureau, the sheriff's department. With this proposal we are hoping to accomplish to be able to attract and retain officers. Now one of the things that we had considered was -- was to increase the add debt entry level pay. However, our -- our consultant advice is that our cadets are at market or near market. So what we have done with this proposal is we've -- after completion, after graduation, after the graduate after the first year, they will see a substantial increase after the first year. And we are hoping that -- that by doing that we will be able to attract or actually to retain some of these folks. Who -- who happen to be some of the ones that are going to a.p.d. Or Round Rock or -- or other departments. The other thing that we are hoping to accomplish with this proposal is -- is to slightly narrow the gap between the -- between the senior cpo's and the senior deputies. Currently I think the gap is at 10%. And we just want to get it across the board to 8%. Actually, it goes from -- from all the way from 9% to 12%, some steps, we are just trying to get across the board 8%.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> senior deputies.
>> senior deputies. Currently, it's been between nine and 12%. Difference. And we are trying to get it to 8%. Then of course all of the other levels would be adjusted accordingly. In closing, I think both associations have attempted to do everything we have though the done in the past. We got with p.b.o. Early, we have followed advice from different folks and -- and we are hoping that the court considers our proposal.
>> okay. We think this is the final --
>> this is the final.
>> yes, sir, this is.
>> okay. Let's get that data. So we can get the comparison information to the court members and we can review that and -- and this is already part of the budget process. So -- we move to the next step.
>> judge, two weeks ago when Commissioner Gomez asked me a question about whether our retirement carries over, I did -- I did speak in error. Our retirement will follow us to -- to another jurisdiction like a.p.d. But my -- my point with that is there's no validity in law enforcement.
>> [buzzer sounding] law enforcement won't -- a tenured law enforcement officer won't leave to go to another jurisdiction because he won't be able to obtain the rank that he holds with this department. But yeah our retirement will carry over.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> ebad is next, followed by rick
>> [indiscernible]
>> good morning honorable councilmembers and honorable Sam Biscoe. I'm here representing myself as always. The -- the points of contention would be legal advice and intake clinic for low income individual. I see one of the items that's coming up, to get information on. Is -- is the weather and how it pertains to people that are homeless. Remember I told you all last week that many camps within Travis County and when it rains like that, they -- those camp sites get rained out. I'm glad that you all are going to be doing that today. I would love to please look into the property that's I believe owned by Austin independent school district on the corner of oak springs and webberville, it's been vacant for several, several years. And my father had a vision for that facility since he used to be a senior citizen center at one point. And it became a -- a daycare center for children. He had a vision that it would be great if it was a housing facility for men and women over the age of 50. With the homeless, there isn't that much housing for men. There's plenty for women, but that property is just sitting there. Please look into for maybe next year's budget or put it into this year. But it property that's just sitting there. And with the weather being the way it is and -- and the housing situation, right now the salvation army only has five vacant beds daily. That's to show you the emphasis of -- of the competition for beds within the Austin resource center for the homeless, salvation army and on the -- all of the other places that are -- some churches also are taking folks now in the inclement weather. But keep up the good work, I thank you all.
>> thank you.
>> thank you for keeping us posted.
>> is rick
>> [indiscernible] here?
>> my name is rick hightower, I represent the purchaser on the 6701 burnet road, the farmers market. We don't have an action item before the Commissioners right now, but we have a few requests that we would like for the commission to look at and consider and act on at some other time. In the process of due diligence of the property, we've had a phase 2 performed on the property. It has indicated that there are some areas of contamination, hydrocarbon contamination on the property. At this point it doesn't look like it's a huge area, but it's not really addressed in the contract, how that's taken care of by the county. What we have done is provided staff with a letter of our request, but we also wanted to come before the commission and ask them to consider it, also. We want the commission to consider cleanup of the area that's found contaminated by the -- under the phase 2 that we prepared. I think we have provided a copy of the phase 2 to the county, just came out right at the end of last week. If not we will get it over to staff immediately. It indicates, if you will remember, there was an old service station there then they took out the old tank, information that the county gave us indicated that they had anticipated doing further review, but we never got any information on it, we did our phase 2, some areas, I think it was like a 14 by 10 area, five foot that the phase 2 requested to be excavated and the soils replaced and done away with. So there's a cost factor of removal, there's a cost factor of the reports that we would like the county to consider picking up and to -- also that -- that raises a timing issue under the contract for when we -- the earnest money goes hard, when we actually close. The second issue that we are having, if you will remember there's a management agreement on this property that's going to survive closing. It's -- it's an agreement that was signed I think 20 years ago and it has about another year going on it. We have been trying to obtain some information on it so that we can figure out how it affects us financially. It requires certain reports to the county on leases, on income, on expenses, we are trying to obtain that information from the management company. It also requires fidelity bond, insurance, cost items that we can't get that information at this time from the manager. So what we have done again with a letter to staff and asking the Commissioner now to see if they can help us get that information so that we have a better handle on what's -- what's happening on the property and what the results are going to be financially during the term of this agreement.
>> okay.
>> if -- I don't know if we did this in the right forum. We figured maybe asking and directing would be the way to approach this with the Commissioners.
>> we will look into both of these, we appreciate it.
>> thank you.
>> that does it for those who signed in for citizens communication. Anybody else here on citizens comiewks whether you signed in or not?
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, July 25, 2007, 18:30 AM