Travis County Commissioners Court

July 17, 2012 - Item 21
Agenda

21 is to consider and take appropriate action on request to co-sponsor a back to school concert series for youth and families.
By the way, we'll take up item 22 next.
We're running a little bit behind on when we thought we might reach these items. But we do have representatives here on 21.
And if we could get your names.

>> Good morning, judge and Commissioners.
My name is charles byrd, but everybody knows me as nook.
And I brought along with me brianna colvin.
She's the event manager for jump on it.

>> Okay.
And what is jump on it?

>> Jump on it has been in the past a free outdoor concert series for the youth.
We started in 1997 at rosewood mark and that was during a time when the teen crime rate was really rising.
Gang violence in Austin was at an all-time high number.
And we decided to do an initiative during the summer that would give the youth something positive to do every week, something to look forward to outside of -- we have the schools, we have the churches, we have the different type of after care programs, things like that, but as far as forms of entertainment, that was what was lacking.
So we decided to go under the umbrella of entertainment and bring everybody out to one location and make it like a community resource event where we have artists that will come out and speak to the children, perform.
We have a forum and we invite out public officials out to talk.
We brought out law enforcement, things of that nature to make it one community event, but something that would attract the youth and give them something to look forward to.
So from 97 on, jump on it became like a tradition.
To where the children look forward to it and we would get numbers up to 8,000 people at the park.
And it grew into a big community event.
So we haven't done it in over eight years, so what sparked us to bring the initiative back is there's been a big issue in the community, the violence, actually gang violence is back on the rise and we've had a lot of law enforcement related deaths for whatever reason.
I spoke with sheriff hamilton on this about a year ago and it was a huge concern to bring the youth back together and have some conversation on how we deal with law enforcement.
And bring law enforcement out and have a common ground on that.
In the urban community it's kind of like we are standoff liquor to police.
Police are looked at like bad guys.
And me being an adult now I understand the difference and know that that isn't true, but the youth and the music and everything that urban youth do, it's always a stigma and stereotype negative against law enforcement.
So when sheriff hamilton and I spoke, it was mainly we need to bring the youth together, bridge the gap and start talking to the kids and have the kids meet law enforcement and have it under one umbrella of entertainment to where we can kind of come to a medium to where we have a relationship, build in community policing with the youth and the police.
We've lost at least off the top of my head I think nine police-related deaths for whatever reason, whoever is at fault.
That number is an alarming number and something has to be done, and it starts with the core level of the youth and giving them positive messages.
So when we bring out thousands of kids to this concert it's under the auspices of a concert, but what we really do is educate them.
We give them positive messages.
We give them resources and we have law enforcement out in plain clothes, not suited up to go out and talk to them, shake their hand, everyone will learn we're all human, we're all one community and we all have to work together.
So the entertainment is really a debate and once we have them in we pretty much feed them with all the education, resources and positive messages we can give them to plant seeds so they can go out and hopefully some of them will grow.

>> Judge, this has come up before and I would like to thank mr. Byrd for what he's doing and what he's done in the past.
Of course this has come to Commissioners' court before and of course we supported it.
And I really was honored to sponsor this.
In talking to mr. Byrd, along with the sheriff and the community on a lot of things, something that I think has been a void, and that's the nexus that has not -- is not there as it was in the past the.
And of course, it was kind of on the fast track basically because the event is coming up pretty quick.
And of course we didn't have much time to explore into a whole lot of things.
So I basically wanted him to work through hhs department.
Of course at one time the city was a big part of this, and I guess this is a one-time funding situation here now.
Of course there will probably be other funding opportunities as we go through maybe the budget cycle, but for right now they needed to move forward pretty quick because they had an array of things as far as bringing this particular event together for the back to school concert for youth and their families, which is a real big deal down at rosewood park.
So mr. Byrd, can you basically tell me what are some of the things that will be provided?
I know you mentioned the educational situation, the outreach, but there will be other things that you may want to mention at this time so folks will -- because you do have a budget, per se, to kind of lay things out according to your budget, security, a whole lot of other things that you -- food, things like that.
Could you basically say what the money is going to be used, how it's going to be used, if you could basically highlight a couple of entries.

>> Yes.
And I'll let brianna speak on some of that.
One of my main things is I'm also a dropout prevention spokesperson.
So one of my main agendas is pushing education.
So we'll have various booths out there with information on higher learning for kids that want to go to college.
Any other programs, educationalwise that the youth can get involved with during the summer because there are a lot of things going on in the city, we're just not privy to having the information right there at hand.
So that's the beauty of bringing those many people out at one time is you have a captive audience.
And other initial that has been alarming is the number of hiv cases in teenagers.
So we'll have a booth out there doing testing on that and passing out information on that as well as teen pregnancy and planned the parenthood organizations like that.
So I'm going to really advocate the educational side and the health awareness side.
Budgetwise brianna can go into what we'll be doing with the finances we're asking for.

>> In the initial budget what we're asking for is pretty much to establish the event.
We want stage, we want sound, we want lighting.
We want to make sure that the event is run to the best of its ability.
I think the goal in the whole concert is the fact that we can bring out the live resources for this community.
We can bring out the elected officials, have them speak to the people, get to know who they are so that whenever you see them in the streets, you could say hey, I actually -- I put a face to your name.
I know who you are, you're a representative of who I am.
And so I think that's really important for our youth that we actually reach out to them and show them that there are voices and they need to learn that they can speak and be heard.
And that's really what the key to this whole event is and that's why it's so important.
I'm charged with it and ready to go and let's make this happen.
That's why we're here.

>> Pretty much the budget will be allocated towards bringing down the performers because we want to have a couple of national acts that the kids know that will draw them out.
Like she said the sound, stage, lighting and all the pertinent things that go with the event.
The city council will give us fee waivers for the venue that waived a portion of the fees, so we'll have fees actually needed to cover the park cost, the insurance, the security.
So pretty much the whole facet of running this one-time event.

>> What is the cost?

>> 15.5.
15,500.

>> So if we pull out the items that the city will pick up, we will get to the real number that you need.

>> No, the real number is 15.5.

>> But I see security here $1,500.
The city is not covering security?

>> No.
The only thing they done with the time shortage that we had this year was they agreed to do fee waivers.
And we had three councilmembers do a fee waiver of $250 each.
The total park cost is 3500.
That's 3,000 for the park, 500 for utilities with a 2,000-dollar damage deposit.
And basically the whole situation was I was not intending on doing jump on it.
I will be honest with you.
I have totally moved on from doing the actual concert series to going more direct into the schools and things of that nature, but due to the last incident, the police related shooting, I talked with sheriff hamilton and it really touched both of us and it was like something needs to be done.
That was two months out before the summer.
So it put us in a situation of we have to try to do something for the kids.
So initially we were working at doing a whole series every Wednesday like we used to for the entire summer.
And we started doing that and it put us in a last minute situation.
So in our timing and getting with parks and rec and the city of Austin it wasn't enough time that they -- that they thought it was enough time to actually put it together.
So they want to help more -- co-champion forewith fee waivers.
We reached out to you guys to see if there is anything that could be done to help.
So this is pretty much like a last ditch effort to do one event for the kids so that we can give them something to look forward to for next year, but we can bring them out at least one time this year to say hey, somebody cares about you, because -- I will be honest with you.
The last guy named amad that was killed by law enforcement, it made it real obvious that there is a lack of leadership in the young urban community of Austin.
And I grew up under the taught language of dorothy tuner and she was a great leader and there was a lot of host of leaders that she had with her.
And in this last incident somebody in the community wanted the younger guys or whatever decided to do a protest.
Not having any guidance or know how to do an event like this and have the permits so the outcome could be like they want.
They just decided let's everybody get together and let's go down to the police station and let's make enough noise to bring out chief knee.
And then when chief knee comes out we'll let him have it.
And the idea is good, but there was no leadership.
And I was out of town at the time, but when I came back in Austin and I saw the pictures and it was just a bunch of guys hanging out in front of the police department in their cars smoking, drinking, it why is was horrible.
And I was not upset at what happened.
I was upset because there is no leadership to garner that energy of those people wanting to make a change and wants to have a voice.
No one was there to say this is how you do it and this is how we can civilly go out and set a goal and accomplish that goal.
And so jump on it is like that platform where you have everybody's attention.
You will have thousands of youth there, their parents and you can have someone on stage such as myself and say, this is what we need to do.
We need your email addresses, we need y'all to go to the website.
We can kind of mobilize the community, here's our community leaders, here's where if you have an issue this is the person you can talk to and kind of give those resources out because they're privy in the community, it's not promoted in the community enough to where we know what to do and how to do it.
And so that pretty much is a preventive measure to say any time anything happens in the community, here is a resource and here is how we can go out and reach our people and bring something together to mobilize for whatever issue it is at hand at the time.

>> In June, mr. Byrd, June 19th, in fact, in the Juneteenth parade I had a long conversation with our sheriff, sheriff hamilton, and we spoke about this situation and we knew that the time lines were getting critical because it was also brought to my attention, what you're talking about here today.
And of course, we looked and tried to figure out how would we come up with the source of funding.
We didn't know exactly how much it was going to be at that time.
Because we had no -- no budget request at that time and really didn't know.
But I did ask the sheriff, sheriff hamilton, I said sheriff, I said look, let us, if we possibly can, look for a way to fund this project because it's a void and it is a need.
And it was a good thing and maybe need to be rekindled, this particular event.
And of course the sheriff didn't hesitate.
He said Commissioner, I'm with you.
So the sheriff -- not only that.
I said wait a minute, we need to look at budget and see where things are and things of that nature, but I asked the sheriff, I said sheriff, how serious are you about this?
And so the sheriff said I'm serious.
So I asked him at that time what would be -- does he has in his budget the amount of the $15,500 that you're requiring here today, and of course he was out of town when I talked to him.
And of course he wanted to go through the proper channels to see if they could come up with the source of funding.
And of course, in that I understand that pbo, and of course the sheriff's department did come up with the source of funding for this particular project, for this one-time situation, but to hear what you're saying today, we also have to look I think toward the future.
That is, with the relationship that you had with the city and of course your relationship with the county.
Judge Biscoe has been very supportive of this also.
And with the sheriff with this we need to, I guess, hear from the sheriff's office or pbo or someone to basically let you know exactly the source of funding which had been brought to my attention.
So let me hear from folks that are sponsoring this event.

>> Are you speaking for pbo or the sheriff.

>> Pbo.
Diana ramirez with the planning and budget office.
We did work with the sheriff's office and their financial manager after we got the request from the sheriff himself that he wanted his budget scrubbed to see if they had $15,000 for this project.
They found $15,000 in their operating budget.
Pbo has verified that those internal resources are available and would not be needed for any critical sheriff's office expenditures the rest of this fiscal year.

>> Do we think that legally the county with pick up all of these costs?

>> I think that's where the problem comes in our time limit is that there would have to be a contract and there would have to be performance measures that are supportive of county-authorized activities, which we aren't authorized for entertainment.
We are authorized for some of the other parts of this, but we've got to have a contract in place that would support that and provide the confirmation that those performance measures are met.
I think that was one of the problems in the previous deal is that we never got the reporting information from the other contracts.
So that's the issue we've got is in gathering that and putting that together in time.

>> I have a question that maybe would go to that.
Where is -- what is our funding source for leadership Austin?

>> I'm not sure, I'm sorry.
I will have to go and research it.

>> General fund.

>> It's general fund.

>> The reason why I raise it is I totally recognize that we've got a contractual -- a from the central issue here, but the goals of the program as y'all state them are very similar to leadership Austin.
It's building leadership, it's building understanding of the various ways things are connected.
I'm wondering do we have a contract with leadership Austin?
This might be an opportunity to ride coattail.

>> Remind me of the date of the event?

>> It's Wednesday, August 15th.

>> And I spoke with sherri on this and of course the contract issue did come up, but I basically was going to see if we could possibly just go ahead and give a directive from the court to enter into a contract based upon what we have for today so the all of the folks can be involved in that to make sure that they get the funding in time to do what they need to do.
So that was going to be part of my motion, to enter into a contract with these folks.
We can draw out the details of the contract is something that I guess we can do, but I don't want that to come in the way of something that we need to probably take care of, especially if the money is available.
So that was going to be part of my motion that we do enter into a contract based on what we have here now.
And I think we can do that, I believe, legal.
I believe we can.
And I did speak with the sheriff on that and contract -- with sheryl on that and the contract was part of the issue.
And dealing with the auditor, dealing with those folks, we can still enter into a contract situation.

>> Well, we don't need to give you a green light when in fact we can't do it.
It seems to me that in addition to discussing specifics with legal, we really need a representative from the auditor's office anyway.
Invoices that come to the county are paid by the auditor.
And if the -- we've had some situations where the auditor has not agreed with the nature or purpose of the expenditure and so payment has not been made.
So you don't want to be out therein occurring expenses when we may not -- it seems to me that we need to take a week to do that.
If the court is inclined to be helpful.
Now, it does seem to me that on these park costs and the rest of that we really ought to talk to stint for you and try -- to the city of Austin for you and try to get a better contribution from them.

>> That is needed.

>> It's pretty steep.
That's a pretty steep amount they're still charging.

>> Some of the stuff you need, like security and water and like for kids, t-shirt and sandwiches.
But on the park cost, seems to me that --

>> That's 5500.
3,000 for the park, 5 money for the utilities and -- 500 for utilities and 2,000 for damage deposit.

>> Yeah.
And if we are inclined to help out and we go to the city and say hey, we're trying to make this deal go, meet us halfway, and I mean, I think we can get them to cooperate.
I'm just thinking this.
But it seems to me that even if -- excluding contacting the city of Austin we still need to take some time to deal with legal, purchasing, because instead of a contract maybe we can do the purchasing angle with the purchasing order, but the auditor would have to agree --

>> They would still have to agree.

>> And I guess then, judge -- let me ask this question to you, nook.
I know there's a lot of hurdles and I knew part of this was -- had been confronted, especially dealing with the auditor, however I was going to try to make a motion that would be all encompassing for all of those things that we're talking about here today and still move forward.
I i didn't want it to be delayed as far as moving forward with it.
Let me ask this question.
If we could come back next week with an agendaized item that covers the things that in concert now, will that still be enough time?
When does the event start?

>> It's August 15th and we're right at four weeks away.
We're at a point that whatever needs to be done in whatever time period, we have to work with it.
I would like to have at least a full month to three weeks to promote it so everyone would know, but --

>> But I guess you need confirmation to make sure this funding mechanism happens.

>> Right.

>> You need to know that.

>> The main thing is getting the artists that's going to come down, those are the main components we need to actually move forward, and those guys, it may take a week or two weeks just to get those artists confirmed.
And that's the main bait of the event that will draw out the kids.

>> Judge, could I have this to come back next week with the concerns that have been brought up here today?

>> Yes, sir.

>> And have it agendaized accordingly.

>> Court members -- y'all won't be here next week.

>> How does it sound?

>> We would need to hear from everybody Tuesday exactly what we can do otoas to exactly what we can do.
And we've done printing for folks before to give out the information that Travis County would ordinarily give out, such as the hiv information or I guess brought that information.
So there's also that possibility of doing the inkind from the county of what we normally would do anyway.
And whereas we may not be able to cover other expenditures.
So --

>> Yeah, some of these we never do.
That makes a big question mark there.
However, just because we haven't done it doesn't mean we can't do it, but we do need to make that determination first.
But you have the sheriff's commitment to authorize the use of this from his budget.
Mr. Reeferseed would be quick to point out that it's still taxpayer money.

>> [laughter].
Why don't we do that then.
We'll commit to try to work on this.

>> (indiscernible).
The agenda, the way it reads.

>> I think it depends on how the sessions go.
But if we have the meetings we can land on this tomorrow and know how it's looking and we'll try to make it happen.
And try to get some partners.

>> Thank you, mr. Byrd,.

>> Definitely appreciate your time and we'll be working on moving forward and getting the kids involved now so they'll know.
Anything y'all do would greatly be appreciated.

>> Appreciate your patience.

>> Judge, if we could get a little more maybe in writing of exactly when you say the official who is going to be there, what's going to be -- who the participants are going to be, who is going to have booths, who is going to provide information.
If we could get more of a written description.

>> When would you need that by?

>> As soon as possible.
That's what's going to help us figure out if it's something we can fund.
So whatever you already have and then whatever you're trying to confirm, but that's the type of thing that we're going to need in order to put a contract together is to know what the substance of it, not what the entertainment is going to be, what the substance of your activity is.

>> Okay.

>> Does it still -- well, we're looking at the purchasing office also, but you probably need to have the same thing either way.

>> You're still looking at the same issues.

>> Purchasing, also the auditor.
So anyway, --

>> Thank you, mr. Byrd.

>> We'll get that information out.

>> Please do.
Thank you.

>> Thank y'all.
Thank you for your patience too.

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