Travis County Commissioners Court
August 28, 2007
Item 17
17. Consider and take appropriate action on request to authorize fee increases for services provided by the counseling and education services department.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> ...and more costly to provide these assessments. We'd like to charge $20 in addition to the 55-dollar fee if someone needs to have both assessments.
>> we still have a fee waiver for indigents.
>> yes, sir.
>> we simply have to know that you cannot pay, then we have an eligibility determination that we make and if in fact you are indigent, we will find a way to accommodate you.
>> yes, sir.
>> questions?
>> and there's another fee also to add two dollars to all the education classes. And these are like the hot check class, the shoplifting class thvment year it was in a special fund, but it's now in the general fund with everything else with counseling and education services, but we have been increasing the crime victim's fund by about five percent per year, and in discussions with pbo, they want us to do internally, and we're like, well, if we increase the fee and so we bring in more revenue, then would that make it more palatable to do so? It's $2,740 and they agreed that it would if the court indeed improved -- approves the increase. So that's a two dollar increase that would bring in an additional $8,748.
>> we figure that the implementation date for boats is October 1, 2008. We really mean October 1, 2007, don't we?
>> yes, sir. We do.
>> and I would note that the conversation we had earlier on another item unrelated to you all, it is a user fee that is being diverted for another purpose, but the purpose is related and it makes sense for it to be diverted for a related purpose.
>> that's why I move approval of both.
>> I'll second, judge. The only thing, I kind of was curious, do we see people coming back through the program for class after they've gone through classes? Do they come back through again or do the classes take?
>> well, for bad check classes they do because there's the eight hour and then the 20 hour, so we do see people coming back for the higher level one. We track our family violent assessment and we've seen a few of those. For classes, we don't commonly run those numbers to sigh how many come back, but we could because we have the same date of birth and names. We could do that for you.
>> I was just kind of wondering once people attend a class, does it take?
>> people say I kind of knew I had a problem, but now I totally realize I do. We get a valuation -- evaluation on every client that comes through and we have percentages on that. The ones that are successful with the post test saying that they have indeed learned something. So we do have those statistics.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you for your patience too.
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, August 29, 2007, 18:30 AM