Travis County Commissioners Court
October 2, 2007
Item 9
Number 9 is to consider and take appropriate action on request to submit revised proposal for Texas department of criminal justice state jail community resource program. This is just an exchange, but I thought the court should hear about it.
>> > good morning. Thank you very much. I'm danny hobby and I'm interim criminal justice coordinator. We're back to you. We were here last August the 14th. You approved us going forward with a response to this particular r.f.p. Since that time, as of last week, September 27th, they were supposed to come back with us and begin negotiations in regards to our response. And so now they have submitted a new r.f.p., totally new r.f.p. Which has a totally different focus, and so today I would like to just briefly have mark space, who is the clinical manager with counseling and education services, he was here before, explain the initial response and now I'd like for him to briefly highlight what they are now requesting us to look at and for us to respond to. So mark? >> > the biggest change or the change in this is they've decided not to pursue a treatment program statewide. This is not just Travis County, this is statewide. >> > did they say why? >> > they did not exactly say why. >> > they didn't? >> > even though we -- >> > we asked. >> > akd as tactfully as we could, we did try to get that information. I believe what they realized was for $5.8 million to do 1200 beds across the state, to do a thorough job with treatment it wasn't enough money, but that's my guess. But they have not said specifically why. >> > so the legislature gave them a finite sum of money that they are trying to work with and they were trying to get really a huge amount of treatment out of it. >> > exactly. >> > and I know when we saw it and submitted our response, we kind of questioned whether they could get as much bang as they thought they could in treatment for those dollars. >> > and we kind of thought from the beginning you couldn't. >> > probably other urban counties said pretty much the same thing, don't you think? >> > apparently everybody said pretty much the same thing. I do know that most of the bids were double -- their targeted per diem was $6.62 a day to provide treatment. And I do know that most of the providers that bid on this were at least double that, were into the 12 or 13 dollar range. Others was higher, but as we said, we knew we were going to come in high, but we were okay with that because we thought we had a really good treatment package put together for them. >> > who comes up with those -- who generates those numbers. To have you thinking it's bun thing and it's actually something else as far as the cost is concerned. >> > yeah, I don't know exactly who. We got an e-mail from t.d.c. Telling us that most providers had bid in the 12 to 13 range and ours was even higher than that. But as far as how they came to believe that they could do treatment 1200 beds statewide 365 days a year for $5.8 million, that's -- >> > that is my point. Where did they get those numbers from? >> > I believe that's the amount of money the legislature give them for the state jail part of this program. They are funding -- if you are familiar with substance abuse felony treatment programs, they are funding those. They got a chunk of money from the legislature to provide treatment in prisons. They are doing the individualized therapeutuc communities in prisons so they are doing some treatment endeavors in prisons, but the state jail piece, how they came up with $5.8 million for that, I don't know. >> > but with the dollar figures, Commissioner, I think as the judge mentioned, with the dollar figures they attempted to see what the response would be. So we responded as well as others and so as a result of that now they feel like they need to go another direction and so that's why we're here today is to ask your permission to come back next week with the draft and submit -- they've given us a very short time frame again. The reason why I put it on the agenda quickly is we thought we had until this Thursday to turn it in. But if you would, mark, briefly highlight what we're going to be looking at and what we're going to be trying to bring back. >> > okay. Sure. They still want a lot for a little. It's still the same kind of a deal where they are asking for a lot of services for a small amount of money. The $5.8 million is not going to stretch as far educationally I believe either as they think. For 60 two-a-days, we're going to come in higher than that. We will have an educational program with a supporting curriculum. We will have a team that consists of a coordinator, two chemical dependency counselors and two caseworkers and an administrative assistant. They -- we still have 108 108 clients. They've increased the hours to 30 hours of education whereas the treatment hours were 20 hours per week, this is now 30 hours per week. So when you start thinking about doing 30 hours per week of education for a group of 108, with five people, and any time somebody is out for training or sick details or vacations, those kinds of things, it's pretty much of a skeleton crew, but that's what we're looking at. Still trying to leverage the resources to provide some -- they deleted after care totally out of the package. Took the definition right out of there. So we're hoping to do some continuing education that we could still have them come and continue the education once they left the facility if they were on paper and ordered to do so or if they were just interested and so inclined. >> > and we have the discretion to alter the numbers, mark? I mean, hey, I agree and I think it's probably good that somebody decides you know what, wait, don't do that, there's not enough money to do this. Too many programs we have that's like that. I mean, you know, because let's face it, if you just have enough money to water something down so that you really can show almost no results unless, of course, you are going to say, okay, if that's how much money we have, in order to do a really good job maybe we need to have half the people or have some sort of a deciding factor that maybe locally that you get to use and say, okay, as opposed to taking on 108 clients or whatever, we're going to take 54 clients because I'd rather show some results out of something. Do we have the discretion to do that? Wouldn't that be a better business move for us? I know the state wants you to do all these kind of things, but why wouldn't we go back to them and say quite frankly the same reason you have pulled this down for drug treatment, the education, quite frankly, doesn't get there either so let us have the ability to altar what we think -- alter what we think how we can make this program effective. Would we be able to do that? >> > well, you know, I think the approach is two-fold. The first approach would be to respond to what they submit to us to respond to. And then like we did with the first r.f.p., mark and his team of folks put together a really good proposal saying here's what we can do that for, here's what we feel like that we can be successful in doing. Now we've come back to this -- and, of course, we were anticipating the first round for them to come back and be part of the negotiations. That's part of the negotiations getting to where your focus is and that's if they come back and say I'm sorry, that's too much money and we have to do this statewide, let's negotiate, what can we do. Mark, tell us whether I'm right or wrong, but that's where you get into the scenario we're not going to go with option a, let's work it out to where we can do it and maybe we want to reduce -- do we have that flexibility? >> > if we get into a true negotiation, we could talk about that. If we could get the 108 clients -- if we get 54 clients and the money for 108, which is essentially what it would take to do it correctly, then I think we could do a bang-up job. I don't think t.d.c. Will go for that. The numbers were pre-set from them. If we ever got to negotiation, that could be a negotiation point. To cut it in half and them try to stick with their per diem still causes us the same problem because we would just have less people with the same issues. >> > so who do we go to to say, hey, listen, let's talk about this. We need to be intelligent about this. Don't give us a program, don't give us enough money to just not do an adequate job for these folks because I would rather not personally as a Commissioner I would rather say don't spend the money. Just give the money back and say we don't want to be part of something that we know is not going to be effective. If you want to listen to us and say, you know, we're the ground troops, we can give you, you know, some results that we know that you are out to get, we understand your limited in dollars, but you need to let us tell you if we're going to be effective, here's how many folks that we can have in this program. Otherwise I think that we have a responsibility as an elected body to say, well, then, you are just telling us to go out and spend this money knowing at the end of the deal that people aren't going to be helped that much, but we just spent, you know, 5.8 or -- at least our share of the $5.8 million. So it really begs the question of how do you really get to -- I mean do you go to your state legislators and say help with us thing because when we go and appeal, you know, to the entity that we're appealing to, I would like to think that we have a receptive, you know, audience there to say we can tell you how effective we can be, we just can't be effective with 108, but we can be effective with 54. >> > I think we're right in tune with your logic and that is -- we're going with what they are giving us, but we're also responding back to what we think will be successful. So in this second response we will do the same as in the first response, we will ask more than what they are saying we can do the program for. That has to be our approach because you as the court do not want us to attempt to do something and not be successful. That's what they are going to do the second time. We hope they will come back and do a negotiation. At that point if they come back and if they accept it, then we're great. If they don't, that's when we start talking about how can we make this work then. It may be lessening the number of beds, of folk. But that's the part of the negotiation. The other aspect of this though is that say they approve it and then we go and we start the program, the implementation. We want to record that. We want to monitor everything that we're doing so that we can go back and report this to our legislative folk as to what was good and what wasn't good so we can actually have that feedback and change it. So the next time, Commissioner Davis, we get an r.f.p., hopefully there's been enough feedback from all the folks that implemented this r.f.p. To where the changes could be appropriately made and there may be more funding. It may not be. It may be a totally different dynamic. >> > I guess what I'm saying is I don't care to spend our portion of the $5.8 million just to verify and prove we're going through the motions and we're going to bring you back results we're not going to be happy with, we're certainly not happy with, so I would want us to be more aggressive on the front end and say we know we are telling you we cannot be effective with this number with this limited dollar. We don't need to -- I'm not looking for -- >> > that's exactly what we're doing. On the front end, we are being very aggressive. In the first r.f.p. We were the most aggressive of all the respondents because we weren't going to go in and half sell this thing. And as you just mentioned, start something and prove it -- we don't want to prove it by failure. I'm saying if we go in with a program and we initially ask what we think can be successful, we can still monitor that program and see what's happened during that program, the positives and negatives. Even though it may be a successful program, there's always room for improvement. And so that's all I'm saying. Once you get into the program, you want to monitor it. The front end, that's exactly what they are doing. >> > I guess I'm missing something then because if the state says no, if you are going to participate in this program and take this money, you are going to have 108 people that you are going to have in this program or you are not going to have the program. That's what I'm saying. Can we say we don't want to bid the program because we know what relative humidities we'll get out of serving 180 people. If that it is what we have the ability to do then I would just like to know when you go and negotiate with them if they go no, if you are in the deal, you are signing up for 108. If you are not signing up for 108, then you are not part of the deal. And I probably personally would go fine, tell them we're not part of the deal. I mean why go through the motions to just spend money knowing what the results are going to be. >> > but some education is better than nothing. Some treatment is better than education, but education is better than nothing. Two is that we have to maximize collaboration opportunities. Even if we got treatment dollars, we have planned with local cooperation, collaboration, et cetera. It seems to me that we take whatever amount of funding is provided and do the best we can with it after calling to their attention that we think the number of participants is larger than it should be. And at the same time though whatever money is authorized, I mean I would take it and use it as best I could, but I would just understand we may have to pick up the local collaboration effort. And that's not necessarily let's put more dollars in it, let's get more partners. But we had planned to use some partners anyway, right? >> > we he had. And part of the -- >> > volunteers. It's kind of like the after care, we know if -- after care is probably not effective. So we need to do after care. We've got to start putting that together without the state. To use volunteer, faith based community, nonprofit organizations, us. >> > us. >> > and basically anywhere you could get help. >> > we were going to partner with c.p.i. And with us to do the after care piece. >> > I understand your point and I think we're together on it. But I think -- our response ought to be, hey, you want this number served for this amount right here, we really think you are funding maybe 50% of what you should, so we request this number. But I think our fall-back position should be whatever you grant, we'll take that and use it as best we can, and here's what we'll do locally. >> > judge, the difference -- I mean I'm with you on that. The difference between using those dollars on education versus using -- having treatment, you are right, I don't think you lose anything on education. It's kind of like, okay, we'll give you as much information as we can for the numbers. So I probably need to do differentiate that. What I feel the most strong is inadequate dollars on treatment. I mean I really think -- it's hard to get me to a spot where inadequate treatment money is throwing money -- I mean the people, all you got to do is go out and see our halfway houses and talk to our folks and they will tell you we don't have enough money to take on drug abuse. Now, if you are a family that you've got resources, families with resources can take on drug issues I mean because it's intensive enough and you can do it. But I think, you know, having problems, you know, federal programs or government programs that really don't give you enough money in treatment, I'm sorry and I'll shut up about this, I do get the difference between treatment and education. Education I think -- >> > treatment went back down to zero, right? >> > yes. It's out of the picture now. >> > but also, and, of course, you saw in our response to where we did exactly that. We treated that very serious. But also we are using the same approach in regards to education and that is that we -- if they want to go with 108, then we want to go and respond back that this is how we feel with the number of staff that we can do this. And it is going to be higher than what they are proposing. But again, that's part of the process. You want us to do that. You want us to be able to let them know that, you know, we can do this, but here's what it's going to take. And it's not going to be something that's way out there. This is just -- in fact, we are going to look at the very minimum is what it's going to take, but it is going to be more than what they are proposing, but that's part of the process. Then they will come back and negotiate with us and that's when we will get into those discussions as to what we can and cannot do. We want to try if we can, especially on the education side of this, we want to take what we can, but we don't want to take something and fail. Because it did increase the number of hours so we want to be careful we don't get into something that's going to be a negative rather than a positive sieve. >> > just so you will know, we're on the same page because our original proposal for treatment was $26 a day, $28 a day. We're looking for 662. We were twice what everybody else was. That's how I can figure out they were $13 a day because we were $16 a day and they sent an e-mail and said you guys are twice what everybody else is. But that's the reason we did it because we don't want to do it if we can't do it right. And I think you can cause harm -- we want to do it right. The same with the education. We're about 918 for day, they are looking at 662 a day. We're not going to fit our program into their box. We're going to propose our program. I think the numbers like the 108 were set through the legislative process of tctj was given that much and that's where the 108 has. How much wiggle room they have on rolling that back I'm not sure. If they roll it back and left the funds that is correct might work. If they take away half the money to do half the people, we've got the same problem. I think we're all on the same page. We wanted to do a good job and the pros are if we can get in and do a good job, we have a voice at the table and next legislative session. If it gets to where we just can't do it, I'm with you that we could just say, you know what, we can't do this. >> > do they have the authority to provide one per diem say in a small rural area, another in an urban area? >> > they are expecting to. >> > it will cost a whole lot more here and harris and dallas counties than it would in some of the smaller counties. >> > that's correct. Their logic is in verse. But what they have said is that for the larger units, harris county is going to have almost 400 beds. They expect harris county to come in lower than the other counties. The smaller programs in the 108, Travis County is a smaller program, they expect us to be a little higher. >> > judge, one of the process steps that I need to get clarification from the court and that is the reason why we feel like we need to come back this week is basically this is a new r.f.p. So we would be responding to a totally new r.f.p. Which you then would sign again. I'm assuming we would need to come back, judge. >> > when is the deadline? That's the question. >> > 16th. October 16th. >> > >> > >> [inaudible] by then? >> > we have to have it to them by 5:00 October 16th. >> > will you have it ready next week? >> > we'll have to if we are going to turn it in. >> > then we may as well see you. >> > we'll be back. >> > let us enjoy and appreciate your fine work. >> > thank you all. >> > there will be slightly different wording? >> > yes. >> > thank you. Appreciate it. If there's no objection, direction will be to proceed. >> > yes. We will. .
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, October 3, 2007, 18:30 AM