Travis County Commissioners Court
July 8, 2008
Item 30
30. Consider and take appropriate action on proposed changes to sheriff's office dispatch interlocal agreement
>> good afternoon.
>> good afternoon. I'm paul
>> [indiscernible] from the sheriff's office and here to answer any questions that you have about this proposal.
>> there are a couple of changes contained in the backup and issues were raised at the agenda setting meeting. I don't see the person that raised those issues then. Instead of going to 100% of the fee calculation, basically we land on 75%.
>> yes, sir.
>> is that just for 2009 or leak a commitment into the future.
>> a commitment into the future to help the municipalities pay for the technology for this next year, for the years to come.
>> okay. Then there was the -- the notation there that -- that the Travis County i.t. Has agreed to allow the municipalities to utilize the help desk to troubleshoot connectivity and password issues.
>> yes, sir.
>> we expect that to be fairly simple and -- and -- I expect there to be a few calls once they learn about passwords and how it connects. But after that I would not expect there to be too many problems.
>> i.t. Has agreed to do this?
>> yes, sir.
>> all right. My final question then, the part about the -- they will reimburse the county for any assistance we give in setting up and maintaining the approved software image, what does that mean I guess?
>> well, I felt it was we needed to build a mechanism in case that -- in case the technology issues outside of this municipality's expertise fell on our i.t. Departments shoulders to help them solve their software problem. And I didn't want to -- a blanket statement that we would just do this for free forever. I wanted to -- to build into the contract the ability to bill at a similar rate that the city radio shop that utilizes this for these image issues that if they become a burden to i.t. Will have the ability to recoup some of their losses through time.
>> we will able to distinguish between assistance in the first category help desk and software related issues.
>> the software related issues will actually require an i.t. Rep to either go out to the location or bring the hardware into our offices, so it will be easy to distinguish between the two.
>> okay. We believe that the -- that the municipalities understand that?
>> yes, sir.
>> okay. And it's not a big financial hit, but there is one. Can we -- we are basically giving up the 25% that we had --
>> anticipated.
>> yeah.
>> uh-huh.
>> but we think that the value we receive in terms of -- of higher level of collaboration and community and ability to work together will offset that.
>> yes, sir, absolutely.
>> I guess the only thing that bothers me if you lock in 75% perpetually it's a real big commitment. We may conclude 12 months from now that in fact the help desk assistance is much greater than we anticipated, what do we do in that case?
>> well, we can renegotiate the contract every year with these people. But I wanted to give them more commitment that the concept of the reduced fees was acceptable to our communications and the court and I don't know what the future is going to bring, judge. But I think that it's fair to say that -- that it's well worth the decrease in revenue.
>> these contracts, judge, do not go -- don't automatically renew. So each year you have to enter into a new contract. So any year that we decided that we wanted to change that arrangement, that would be part of the negotiation.
>> we'll call it to their attention. I know the language is clear on that. I just need to make sure they -- the municipalities understand that. I guess we've been looking at it annually and getting back with them anyway, right.
>> that's right.
>> because every year the municipalities also have option of opting out. I mean so they, you know, they have a mechanism just like we do.
>> yeah.
>> I mean, you know, the interesting thing is, paul, tell me why is there such a large increase for manor? I mean is it just the growth in manor? I mean, manor is the one that's --
>> we had trouble before trying to -- getting manor to even sign on in the early stages.
>> because they were going to go
>> [multiple voices]
>> a little tussle there, of course the needs have increased. I think part of it is dealing with a lot of growth according to some of the residents that live out there. They -- I believe
>> [indiscernible] just hearing what some of the folks are saying out there.
>> the city of manor's call volume has increased to the point where it's over five percent of our calls.
>> it's big.
>> it's huge.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> may I ask over the life of this contract, is there way for free implementation of this contractual arrangement, to quantify the -- the 25% benefit and to quantify the help desk liability.
>> I don't see anybody from i.t. But I think we can track the i.t. Service calls easily enough. What was the other part.
>> if we can quantify the 25% subsidy benefit to us. It's going to be a soft -- it will be a soft calculation, I understand. But if there is just some way to put some numbers to how we are valuing the 25%.
>> we've looked at a couple of different ways to attach a value to what we do. I'm not sure exactly other than just taking the -- their amount of use and -- and factoring them into our personnel costs and our equipment costs. That's the only way that I have been able to come up with anything that makes sense.
>> would it be valuable at all to get with criminal justice planning perhaps about the benefits to cohesive law enforcement throughout the county and in some way to -- again, I recognize this would be a soft calculation, it would be more art than science. But it might be helpful for us, it might inform our contractual negotiations for next time.
>> emergency services, danny hobby's group, chuck
>> [indiscernible] has been they have been real instrumentcal in encouraging this participation, this level of participation between the law enforcement agencies and all of the other emergency services.
>> I would suggest that we get more benefit than we are laying out, 25% subsidy, but I was -- I was only hoping that through the -- through implementation of the contract we might be able to come up with some numbers that would -- that would point to that.
>> we can try. Whose responsibility is it to evaluate and monitor the contract for us.
>> I do it every year. I do it.
>> move approval, judge.
>> second.
>> anything else? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
>> 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:
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 1:51 PM