Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 21
Number 21, consider and take appropriate action on the Travis County health care district 2012 budget.
>> good afternoon.
>> good afternoon.
>> trish brown, president and c.e.o.
of central health.
actually we're Travis County health district doing business as central health and john stevens our chief financial officer and we'll be going through a presentation of our proposed budget for fiscal year 2012.
we came to you in August to present the preliminary budget and we have made one change since we were here in August and mr. Stevens will walk us through that change.
>> I don't have a copy of the presentation loaded up.
I would assume you rather I roll through it since hopefully you've seen that or you have it in your backup.
>> okay.
>> but we are here today to ask your approval for items 21 and 22, our budget and our tax rate.
our board of managers approved our proposed budget last week on September 14th.
as trish said, we've made two presentations to the court on this budget.
July the 19th and August the 23rd.
and in your backup we also provided a budget narrative, the budget summary in detail, and a summary of public input that we got on the budget when we held our two public hearings on September 1st and September 7th.
one of the things that is in the presentation that we also sent to you in advance is a chronology of our 2012 budget, and I think it's fair to say that this year in particular we had a very, very extensive budget process that began with a presentation of the first five-year forecast we've ever done as a jurisdiction.
that was going all the way back to April the 30th.
so we have been working since April with the board on this budget.
we've had a number of board meetings, we've had a couple of special called board meetings.
we've had some budget and finance committee meetings that had quorums of the board present so they really put in a lot of work on this budget.
to just talk to you briefly about a summary of communications that we received outside of the public hearing process, because we also had communication that came into us in a variety of ways, through emails, through telephone calls and so on.
we had 39 communications.
21 people that we heard from opposed any increase to our tax rate.
two people supported an increase.
14 residents opposed taxpayer funding for abortions, which we are no longer doing in our 2012 budget.
and then two Travis County residents supported funding for other specialized services, generally services that would be provided locally in their area.
as trish said, we have made one change to the budge that's we presented to you on the 23rd, and that is in working with the Texas department of insurance to obtain our certificate of authority to operate our h.m.o., they have requested that because we're a new entrant into the marketing and don't really have any operating history, they requested that we accelerate some of the paid-in capital that we were going to furnish to the h.m.o.
saying it would demonstrate its financial viability.
we had originally planned -- in the budget that we brought to you on the 23rd, we had 5 million included, which was an amount that our actuary had recommended going back several months ago.
what t.d.i., Texas department of insurance, told us they want us to boost that up so we added another 7.5 million.
it will not change the total that we have allocated.
we've set aside a separate reserve of 27.6 million and it won't change that million that will be allocated, it's more of an up front contribution to establish those reserves at a higher level as requested.
>> all right, so the new total is 12 and a half?
>> yes, sir.
>> for fiscal year 2012.
>> for fiscal year 2012.
and so that boosts our total use of reserves of any kind up to 19.8 from 12.3 to 19.8.
we are also using 7.3 million in operating reserves, but we do expect to still have a healthy balance at the end of 2012 north of 70 million, for example.
talking about an overview of the budget, we are proposing a tax rate of 7.89 cents.
our current tax rate is 7.19 cents in this fiscal year.
and our effective tax rate is 7.27 cents.
so that change is due to a 6.5% increase in the operating tax rate and it's also due to the debt service rate that we are adding for the first time of .15 cents, something that, again, we've worked with the court on and I'm happy to say that we successfully closed on that transaction today and actually received the 16 million from the certificates of obligation that we sold.
so our total sources of funding are going up 9.1 million in comparison with the current budget, and most of that change is in our health care delivery program and most of that -- a lot of that change relates to the syndaro.
capital budget is compromised of 850,000 for facility improvements including 500,000 for a possible new site.
and 1 million for information technology.
our tax rate history, we started out in fiscal year 2005 --
>> okay.
>> yes, sir.
>> I called up 21, which really is the 2012 budget.
we have comfort that, right?
>> yes, sir.
>> we are getting into the tax rate which is the number item.
move approval of 21.
>> second.
>> discussion?
>> I appreciate the circumstance the board found itself in with regard to full spectrum reproductive fund, but I do want to throw that down on the table just for record purposes.
y'all found amazing partnership in the community to make sure that full spectrum reproductive health wouldn't suffer, and I hope that we continue to engage on that issue because without it women really don't achieve full parody in society.
>> any more discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
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