Travis County Commissioners Court
August 28, 2007
Item 4
Four is to consider and take appropriate action on various issues related to the fy '08 budget process including a, receipt of consolidated gate budget agenda worksheet containing requests from Commissioners to discuss topics during gate budget mark jump scheduled for September 5, 6 and 7. B, remaining schedule in September for public hearings, advertisement, mark-up and final adoption fy '08 county budget, c statutorily required newspaper advertisement for public hearing on proposed fy '08 tax rate, and d, other ties mentsnext to complete the process, and e, other related issuesbefore you go back into the budget process with the mark-up, what you have been distributed by leroy is what some have called the horse blanket. This is a multicolor the document that has two pieces to it. One is your budget agenda worksheet with four different colors, three different colors, excuse me. Friday afternoon you all had completed independently those topics that you wished to discuss during mark-up. We then consolidated that into one sheet, multicolored, where items marked orange have four or five of you who wish to discuss. There's 16 of them. Those items that are marked in blue have three of you wish to discuss. There's 30 of those. And then there are items marked in yellow, two of you wish to discuss, and then anything not marked is just one of you. Some of you were pahsimoniuso in your checking, and some of you were robust in your checking. Three of you were somewhere in between.
>> somewhere what?
>> pardon?
>> in between.
>> in between, yes.
>> I didn't hear.
>> one of you made six check marks. One of you made 180. And three of you had 53, 53 and 60. And you all know who you are. In any event, and you will see under agenda marks, the person who marked what was indicated with a one, two, three or four, or in the case of the county judge, a five. In addition, anything you indicated in your remarks section was dutifully repeated. Also attached is the worksheet for compensation which our friends and colleagues in human resources and the auditor's office have put together. You have seen this before. In earlier discussions about compensation. I'm hoping to be able to pass out an agenda, proposed agenda from mark-up. The bottom line, proposed by the judge to deal with compensation first, start mark-up at 1:30 on Wednesdayi may have to change that.
>> whatever is your pleasure.
>> instead of 1:30, can we do it in the morning? My commitment is in the afternoon.
>> Wednesday morning.
>> I think if we deal with the dnd line for the tax rate is Thursday.
>> at five.
>> at fire. But really we need to land, I think, on revenue, tax rate, compensation, first day and if we do it the morning of the 5th, I mean, that would be a lot of stress. There are a whole lot of options. It will take some time to look at them. Then the compensation issues are numerous and costly. So if we commit to spend the morning dealing with those two or three major issues, I think we will have pretty much set the pace for the rest of the budget mark-up.
>> right.
>> nine o'clock? Wednesday morning?
>> nine o'clock Wednesday morning. I had had stuff morning and afternoon. The afternoon one really involves nine other counties. So, I mean, if I can go there.
>> leroy has just distributed his proposed agenda. I would not be so bold as to do anything other than propose it.
>> thank you.
>> with your concurrence, of course, we would go through the list here. The first thing would be to review the status of the budget, go through the television screens, approval the preliminary budget as proposed, deal with any corrections, and then start with compensation, retirement system, and deal with four, five, discuss three, two, one, and then approve the from fy '08 tax rate.
>> shall we put that.
>> .
>> check your schedules over lunch.
>> you have marked all day on Wednesday.
>> okay.
>> so you should, not to overstep myself, but I've done it before. You should have on your calendar the availability.
>> question.
>> sure.
>> the afternoon you will be tide up--tied up. So Wednesday it will be nine to noon.
>> we have had a protocol to have all five members of the court during mark-up. Indeed, that is one of the reasons why we shifted to starting next week.
>> that would help me. If we go over 30 to 40 minute, that would be fine. But the afternoon is when I need to be at the other location.
>> .
>> then we are off.
>> three or four big ticket items. The compensation, some other big ticket items that are six figures, maybe as much as seven. Once you handle those, I really think you will be able to land on the tax rate pretty easily.
>> yeah.
>> assuming--
>> if we do the vice versa, that is fine too.
>> meaning tax rate first?
>> set the tax rate first.
>> that's always, well, some believe that that would be a good idea. Some. What it does, it establishes the resources that you have available and then you fill the resources rather than start with the need and deal with the resources afterwards.
>> okay.
>> but that may be what you want you may want to car moving number 7 up on the agenda too deal can the tax rate issues first. The other thing you have in your backup is a calendar, which follows the budget process of the past. It's very tight we have certain statutes which require us to put forth advertisements and public hearings. We have to land on these dates. Very little movement on these dates. Rather than walk you through this, we'll have mark-up on the 5th, 6th, 7th, ads during the week of the 10th, and a public hearing on Tuesday the 18th and another public hearing on Friday morning that is statutorily required, for the statutory tax rate, and adopting the budget on the 25th. This is as much a guide for us to make sure we meet these dates as it is for you. The other item you have is something you have focused attention on in the past, and that is the notice of public hearing on tax increase. That is a statutorily required ad should you go above the effective tax rate. It identifies who has voted for what. What you shaded is the amount or the numbers that would appear if you made no changes to the preliminary budget, no changes to the current tax rate status. Should you change that, then we will, on Friday morning, immediately make modifications to the advertisement that must be in the newspaper on Monday the 10th. Then you also have two other ads that are statutorily required that are fairly straight forward. I think that is basically where we are. I urge you to review the budget agenda worksheet. We have extra copies for those that are interested. And we'll have it in pdf and can send it tronically in multicolor. This really serves as the basis for your decision during mark-up. I think if you have, there may be some questions that surface. Feel free to ask them between now and the 5th.. There's a lot of different ways to manage the process, but I think it should go fairly straight forward. Any questions? I think I'll go back to my office.
>> questions?
>> where do I find the asks for capital idea?
>> oh.
>> the last cheat.
>> --sheet.
>> the last page, I forgot to mention. There were items added by court members. If you look at page 15 or 16. There are also items added by planning and budget. You see the issues dealing with the constable certification pay, the reserve for intergovernmental relations, the capital idea expansion, and then comments about any excess revenue if you your general fund growth to four percent. Items were related to the constable pay issue, then the retirement option that you discussed prior to Tuesday. Thank you for bringing that up. I forgot that.
>> it was my assumption that constable pay was part of the compensation package.
>> yes.
>> okay.
>> there is duplication there. Really for all the compensation issues you should be focusing in on what those sheets that were provided by hrmd.
>> I guess on a lot of these things that we have here, part of the rules that we establish is making sure that the requests go through the department heads and also through pbo before they come forward. How close do we come to 100 percent of that, mr. Smith?
>> I think we have done much better than we have in the past.
>> okay. I know it's difficult. But at least--we.
>> we are imperfect this year but more perfect than prior years.
>> so the rule that the court established with what I just quoted, so there won't be surprises to the department heads or to you, as the overseeer of all of these things the rule has had some impact that the court established.
>> yes. We're still imperfect.
>> christian, I know that. We are too, though.
>> I understand that. So we're in this together. But we're better than we were in the past. In the past we had half a dozen or a dozen things come around but this year it's just a couple and not a big deal. Very straightforward. It's a very complicated world out there.
>> it is.
>> we're in much better shape than in prior years.
>> good to hear that, christian.
>> what action do you need from us today?
>> nothing.
>> action is Wednesday morning.
>> yes, Wednesday morning, Thursday.
>> questions? Okay. Christian, I do have some concerns about revenue options. I guess if I review these, where I see three, four or five checks the need for us to look at the revenue picture and find various options that we may not have discussed may surface. If so, what I'd like to be able to do is send the court an e-mail and send it to you. What I have in mind is there may be requests like what if we do this, what would it generate, what if we do this, et cetera.
>> now, you're referring to revenue options above and beyond additional revenue in the fourth revenue estimate which has already been displayed and shared with you.
>> right.
>> and we will be glad, and I know the auditor's office will be glad to provide whatever staff support we can on those options.
>> okay.
>> the sooner you can give us the options the better the stap work will be.
>> I recall seeing various options laid out at various times during the last month do we have all of those lists on like one document?
>> could you be a little more specific, judge?
>> I will in my e-mail.
>> okay.
>> I don't know what you are referring toyeah--
>> yeah.
>> I can't answer that without being a little more explicit.
>> several things really. Collection rate, reserves.
>> yeah.
>> the collection rate is incorporated in the fourth revenue estimate.
>> the collection rate, interest revenue, that was at included in the fourth estimate.
>> I have a whole lot of stuff but nights separate documents.
>> okay.
>> I'm visual izing several of them right now. What I'd like to do is turn to one document and see several options. I can see the options and also visualize the reasons it was laid out. Then we talk about other possibilities and lay those out in separate documents. So what I'm thinking of is having all of this, all the revenue related options on one sheet of paper. Because I think it would benefit us Wednesday morning to be able to turn to that.
>> okay.
>> at some point running through the different budget requests becomes a little academic if there's not money there to fund them.
>> you all have received an e-mail from leroy, which identified how much additional one-time money and how much additional ongoing money. And it's substantial. So you should have that. And that there are also, I am sure, other options in terms of the kind of things you're talking about, that to the degree that we can categorize them and put them on one sheet of paper, we're going to want to do that. We want to start mark-up with that one or two sheets of paper.
>> what is the date of leroy's, the last.
>> it's the middle, I think last Wednesday is when I sent that out.
>> 22nd? We can take that information, I think some of the information the judge has requested had to do with what if we had a tax rate where there was no increase. And if that's the type of information that you would like to have on there, the one revenue item that we know is still out there that's been being study and worked --discussed and worked on has to do with the sheriff, rental and constable vehicles. That is not in the fourth estimate and that is approximately three or four hundred thousandwe.
>> we have to have the agreements in lace.
>> before it can be certified.
>> that kind of stuff.
>> if I can start off with leroy's August 22nd memo, what's in there I won't repeat, but if there are new ideas, I'll just add those to what is in that memowe'll.
>> we'll be glad to go through in consultation with the auditor's office and see the bits and pieces. I think you're referring to some of the offices that were submitted in reference to potential funding for compensation increases. We can lay those out for you and try to summarize them so that you see what the options are. I do know that--
>> are they in the August 22 memo?
>> that summarized only the difference in revenue between the preliminary budget and the fourth estimate. That is what that summary was. And then diana warner sent out an e-mail after that, kind of explaining that revenue that all of you received a couple days ago, or maybe Friday or yesterday.
>> questions, comments? Thank you very much.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, August 29, 2007, 18:30 AM