Travis County Commissioners Court
September 25, 2007
Item 54
>> 54 is consider and take appropriate action on staff recommendation to approve the public health interlocal agreement with the city of Austin.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners. Sherry fleming, executive manager for health and human services and veterans service. Staff is here this morning to recommend approval of the public health interlocal with the city of Austin, and just briefly, I would share with you that this interlocal meets your statutory requirements as set forth in the Texas health and safety code. It replaces an old agreement with many, many amendments. It represents a lot of energy and commitment to clarify relationships, to create efficiencies, to supply service delivery and a lot of work I think on both the part of the city of Austin health and human services department and, of course, your health and human services department, the county attorney's office, purchasing, auditor's office and a whole host of a variety of employees who have been called upon to assist us throughout this process. We have a lot to be pleased about, but we also have some things we are all committed to continuing to work on. This agreement covers such services as h.i.v. Youth reach and prevention, immunizations, sex y'allly transmitted diseases, www.youtube.com elimination, rodent control, restaurant inspections. It also covers your requirements for animal services. So this agreement's net amount is 2,633,397. I believe there is one remaining point that we need to have some brief discussion with you on and it is actually on page 15 of the backup you were provided, which is page 15 of the contract. And it is related to the city manager's employee reward program, and I will defer to my colleague marietta from the county attorney's office to discuss this provision.
>> I think basically this was discussed last week and we just needed -- we were unsure of the court's final decision. What's listed in that section 13.3.2 are items that the county will not reimburse. And the city had requested that the county include in their reimbursement the employee recognition program. You had a copy of that last week. I think it's around $54,000 total for the group that's included under this agreement. The staff had recommended that the court not include that. The city had asked for the court to make a specific decision on whether or not that would be included. The draft you got yesterday does not have it included. If the court wishes to include that, we'll do a substitute page for 13.3.2 where that would be included as part of what the county would reimburse.
>> correct me if my understanding is wrong, I was under the impression that at least county government is barred from giving gifts such as gift certificates to employees to incent behavior.
>> there are attorney general opinions and we have a bar constitutional on providing additional compensation for something that's already occurred, but there are attorney general opinions that back up the fact that programs that are in place at the beginning of the year are included as farther of a compensation program. So, for instance, our performance pay. That's part of the package. It's in there, it's at the beginning. That is not considered payment for something already done or a gift. It is a part of the program that implies part of the compensation contract, if you would, that an employee sees as available from the beginning of the year. It's in the budget so it is not included under those things that are illegal under those concepts. And this program is in plays with the city so it does meet legal requirements. Now, the county doesn't have a program like this. We don't do this.
>> if we were going to do it, we would try to solicit such gifts from the private sector.
>> that might be the way that this court would approach that. But again, just like theirs, it would have to be a program that were in place, the amounts, the guidelines, the christ, how it's going to be handled, all of that has to be in place at the beginning of the year so it is considered a part of the employment contract.
>> so what happens, I mean, if you -- if the county says we aren't going to do it? Does the city just off set and go on?
>> I can't speak for whether the city would walk away from the agreement if the court refused to include that in their compensation. That would have to be up to the city to say that's a deal breaker.
>> david, what do you think is the answer to that?
>> well, first of all --
>> beat you up whenever you go over there. We're not sending you any more because you are not getting it done?
>> given all the complexities of this particular agreement and all of what we've worked on and all the myriad of issues that we have focused on and compromised on and so forth, it feels pretty good to think this is the only issue of concern at this stage. Again, as we discussed last week, we're trying to avoid parcelling or cutting different parts of our budget and trying to pick and choose what's allowable and so forth, and the whole pointed of this was to be comprehensive, to be fairly simple in terms of our approach. As we discussed last week, it's part of our approved, documented plan where we do in fact recognize employees for certain milestones. Just to give you a example, given all the work that's going into this particular project, if you all do choose to approve it, there will probably be some degree of recognition for a couple of folks who worked really hard to make it happen. So again, it's just part of our overall system of recollect niezing and compensating team people for the good work they do. I'm not going to tell you this is a deal breaker from our perspective. I would hope you would recognize it as an appropriate program in terms of our staff and what we're doing, you know, as a department. But ultimately obviously it's your choice and I think the issue has been laid out very clearly. And I think it's been vetted in terms of issues around legalities and so forth. The one thing I would just mention, however, judge, in terms of your comment relative to the private sector, we in fact are barred from soliciting contributions from the private sector, and in particular a lot of businesses in which we have a regulatory role or relationship. So that's why it's part of our approved general fund budget. Does that answer your question, Commissioner?
>> I'll get it.
>> is this the only issue?
>> the only other thing we made a last-minute change yesterday afternoon and this was the only thing that wasn't in your draft. It was more a clarification than a substantive change, but it includes 4.3 about where we talk about we have the list of county inventory equipment, and as that equipment is used up, it will be returned to the county. The county will dispose of it through our surplus. The city will then purchase replaguesment equipment under 6.2.2. And we added language into 4.4.2245 clarifies that. That was already the understanding. Everyone agreed, but p.b.o. Felt like we needed a little clearer language on that so we added that. That's the only change to the agreement that's been made since the copy that you were sent.
>> were there any changes made to the performance measures or was that a deal breaker?
>> theperformance measures changed over time as we've been going through this process and I think we've got about 85 performance measures compared to our existing 50 or so, 52. But ultimately I think what we ended up with, Commissioner, in terms of the final performance measure report that we presented to you from the city, that is a critical element of this agreement. Because it really goes back to the overall philosophy as it relates to this particular agreement and the population based approach. What we've gone is combination of pickup health services that are population based. Some of which we can break out between city and county. And we have a number of performance measures related to specific programs that are county specific in terms of sites or services, and those are broken out separately in the performance reporting that you have in front of you.
>> but our budget has this in it?
>> yes, sir. Z.
>> in terms of performance measures last week comparing what the county was asking for versus what the city was willing to do, nothing has changed on that score?
>> no, Commissioner. Those documents are as they were presented last week.
>> and I understand this is essentially a deal breaker so we are going with the city's measures, but I do want to point out that not all of these performance measures, I wouldn't even say the majority of those that aren't included go to a system-wide versus a county/city division of labor. Just for example, to take kind of a -- perhaps a less indendiary category, although very important to many of us, animal services. Elements like number of bite investigations, number of responses to calls, number of animals euthanized, numbers of animals adopted, numbers of rabies vaccinations, those are straight numbers. Those aren't county versus city.
>> Commissioner, the animal services program actually I would characterize as one of those in which we have broken it out in terms of city and county, particularly as it relates to the costs associated with the program. We have and will be documenting the number of animals picked up inside the city of Austin city limits compared to those outside of the city limits. We will be documenting the number of animals that we shelter and care for comparing city and county, and also the number of calls we respond to within the city as compared to out in the county. And what we agreed to was a five-year rolling average where we would continue to account for those and then apply the costs between the city and the county based on that actual euthanation. Utilization. I would characterize that as a program where we have been specifically able to identify the activities and the cost based on actual utilization.
>> okay. Then let's -- and that's good news. I'm happy to hear that. But those elements, you would agree, those statistical elements don't go to whether it's city or county, those are just what I would think good performance measures to be able to see how well we as a region, county or city are performing.
>> absolutely, Commissioner. I think when we look at --
>> but those are not included in the contract.
>> I don't think they are included in the contract because they are not what we're using as our basis for the cost methodology, but we clear have those data available. I mean those are key performance measures as a department that we track euthanasia rate, adoption and return to owners. Of course, the spay-neuter services are part of the contract and we do account for how much of that we do, the low cost spay-neuter services. We do a lot of prevention services out in the community. My point quite simply, Commissioner, is that those key measures may not be cited in the actual contract itself, but --
>> but they were requested to be cited in the contract. According to our attachments, in any case.
>> am I missing something here?
>> well, I think to Commissioner's point is we are not seeing those numbers broken out by county, city and county.
>> oh, no, that's not my point. My point is that those elements -- according to the attachments, in any case, the animal services elements included in the contract including -- included in the city's proposal were one, two, three, four, five, six, seven elements. Number of field activities, percent of field activities, percent of field activities completed, average response time, animals sheltered. Percent of animals shelt terd and animals sterilized. That doesn't include number of bite investigations, numbers of analysis euthanized. Numbers of animals adopted. Rabies vaccinations. Impound -- education activities, dangerous dog hearings. Animals quarantined. And I believe -- I am reading those as performance measures that would be regional-wide, not city or county breakout, although certainly I would like to see city and county breakout, but more to the point, I think those measures would indicate to us how well the program was functioning.
>> yes. And what you are reading from was the county staff proposal document. So yes, the point you are making is the difference between what was requested and what we will be agreeing to should this document be approved today.
>> correct. What I'm understanding from mr. Lowery is the city does keep those statistics. They are just not included in the contract.
>> I'd say for the most part that's true, yes, uh-huh.
>> and again, I'm using the animal services just because it's perhaps a little less indendiary than h.i.v. Or www.youtube.com or child immunization stats.
>> I believe, Commissioner, if the city has those numbers available as we move through the year and we actually start using the documents that will be approved, I believe we could come to some agreement on what could be added and the impact of that. Also, in approving this agreement today, it is for one year. So we will be negotiating again very shortly.
>> and I think the point of my line of questions is that I think we should continue to negotiate over the year to include some of the types of performance measures that will make us as a governmental entity be able to function better based on our relationship with the city in this regard. And I bring it up because I'm concerned that what -- while mindful what you are saying that it should be a system-wide effort, some of these performance measures are system-wide performance measures. Some of these performance measures that are not included because the city doesn't want them included are system-wide measures. And it's not just the animal shelter category. I could go on and cite others that I highlighted that weren't included that are requested. I think we can work more closely over the next year and over the years to make us both better partners in addressing child immunizations, sexually transmitted diseases, disease surveillance, there's more we can do looking at these performance measures and I am concerned with this current document although I'm willing to vote approval that we aren't doing all we can as partners to fully inform our governmental bodies so that we can take this information and export it to other work we're doing.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> I would emphasize that the process is an evolving one and this this document is a significant advancement in terms of performance reporting.
>> in last week as discussion on this, at the time I posed the question, during the course of the year is there room for inclusion, whether it be negotiation or whatever term you want to use in this process, will the door be open for that to actually happen. Of course, the answer I got was yes of the I guess the answer is still yes because I think really I guess in my mind, it is revealing to really know what the data is on all the subject matter that has been brought up and is really not being address the but doesn't mean it can't be addressed. That is why I asked for a dollar amount. If you want to pull the lever on that particular data, if you want to pull the lever, you should be able to have that information readily available. Since it's been tracked to some degree. So that was my question, dave.
>> I think, Commissioner, to the degree it is readry veilel and being tracked it can be provided as part of our routine reporting that we do. The important distinction, however, in terms the of this interlocal and what is contractually required, particularly I think as it relates back to the costs methodology, I think it's important for us to recognize that this would be an agreement that we have all committed to for this initial time period.
>> right.
>> certainly, Commissioner, as I said, information that is readily available through our routine monitoring and reporting relative to overall perform is, we'd be glad to share that with the county.
>> it would be good to have an information.
>> sure.
>> as we go forward with this.
>> yes.
>> thank you.
>> this as a result of a two-year process, right? Two years or four?
>> I think the first action asking staff to review the interlocal was in October of '0.
>> okay. Not perfect but it is hutch better --much better that what has been in place historically.
>> yes, judge, I agree.
>> I do think we should continue to work on performance measures, various data that we thing are critical for our decision making. But move that we do not reimburse city for employee recognition but that we applaud the program and ask them to continue as they see fit.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor. That passes by unanimous vote. Move that we approve the proposed agreement with the changes made yesterday.
>> second.
>> and that we basically express appreciation to the city for working with us to get this document. Seconded by Commissioner Gomez. Discussion? All in favor. That passes by unanimous vote. We look forward to working with you at least another 12 months.
>> thank you, judge Biscoe, Commissioners, appreciate it.
>> thank you. I'll get those originals to your office and copies to everyone.
>> okay. Thank you.
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, September 26, 2007, 18:30 AM