Denton County Commissioners Court Denton County Pre-Trial Facility 1406 Troy H. LaGrone Drive, Denton, Texas * * * * * Formal Agenda Minutes
Not Official Minutes.  For official minutes, please contact the County Clerk at 940-349-2012.

July 25, 2003

Be it remembered, Commissioners Court of Denton County, Texas was called to order for a Budget Workshop - Appeal Hearing - on the 25th day of July, 2003, at 10:00 AM in the Denton County Pre-Trial Facility, 1406 Troy H. LaGrone Drive, Denton, Texas, by County Judge Mary Horn. Commissioners Jim Carter, Cynthia White and Bobbie J. Mitchell were present along with County Clerk Cynthia Mitchell's representative, Deputy Clerk Kathleen Bransford.

Judge Horn: Meeting is called to order and I turn it over to you, Donna.
Ms. Stewart: First appeal this morning is Cindy Brown, our County Treasurer on Page A-90 and 3 of 10.
She also handed out a separate packet this morning.

Ms. Brown, County Treasurer: My number one request is additional funding to convert a part-time position at 30 hrs. to full-time at 40 hours per week. Included in my justification for this request is a brief outline of the duties of the County Treasurer.
Under Cash Management: my office handles all the banking for all departments within the county involving 14 checking accounts of which 3 are high volume with over 1500 checks in one account clearing every month.
Investments: I am the Co-investment Officer along with the County Auditor; therefore, everyday I am charged with the duty of investing, redeeming and transferring funds according to the needs of the county. Our current Investment Portfolio is a little over 43 million dollars and being the month of July, it does decrease from this point on.
Payroll: The most time consuming duty of my office is processing the payroll on all 1349 active
employees that we had as of our last payroll. We receive data that HR collects during Orientation for our office to input. My office processes payroll checks, payroll deductions and maintains the benefit balances for vacation time, sick time, personal time, comp, retirement and holidays. When there are discrepancies, it is my office that researches time sheets - a time consumer. We have over 68 different types of pay categories. There are 49 different types of available deductions. We manage the direct deposit program with over an 80% participation involving over 214 active banks. We prepare and file the quarterly 941's and the annual W-2's. Payroll expense is 59% of our annual budget or approximately 68 million dollars. It is a huge undertaking.
Disbursements, jury payments and other duties: Bail Bond is taking up a lot of my time. I have been very active in assisting the Civil DA in collecting collateral for unpaid judgments.
Since my last new hire in 1999, it had been nine years since my last new hire. Since 1999, various mandates from the state and court-approved items has increased my workload including 22 (net) new types of payroll deductions, an increase in payable benefits, state longevity pay for DA prosecutors, Juvenile Supplement Pay and the increase in Bail Bond actions. [Please refer to handout for further details presented by Ms. Brown.]
The 10-hour per week increase request will help my office with the clerical duties and customer assistance once provided by other staff.
My second request is for Training & Education for an additional $1500. The recommended budget has a total of $2600 of which $2300 has been identified as mandated or central training for me. You can see in my hand-out where the mandate exists for my training. This leaves only $300 left for staff training and, as you know, the tuition fees to some of these trainings can be expensive and $300 might pay for a tuition fee but certainly not for travel or housing.
My expenditures for the year will be met with the $4500 I am requesting. I have faithfully spent that every year on what I have just mentioned - my required essential training and being able to send one payroll staff per year to an in-state training opportunity through the American Payroll Assn. Attached is a course outline for you to review. The employee can then come back and share information learned with other staff members. Tuition to this one class can exceed $1300, including course instruction, material, meals for the day, etc.
I am asking for an additional $840 for computer supplies. This line item for the current year had a little over $5000 - cut by $2000 in the Recommended Budget. A large expenditure in my office in computer supplies is for a special toner to print laser checks. Each toner does 10 to 12,000 checks with each cartridge being $395.00. I calculated that I will need seven cartridges in this next fiscal year, consuming $2,765 of the $3000 allotment, leaving me $235 dollars for ordering plain and regular toner necessary for the other laser printers handling our day-to-day printing requirements.
Last but not least, is a request for an increase in my fixed-mileage. For as long as I can remember and back into the years of my predecessor, this office has been allotted $180 annually to fund travel requirements. Please refer to the last page of my hand-out for a graph indicating current fixed-mileage received by county employees - I am second to the lowest and yet my travel consists of the following: Commissioner Court meetings almost every week, multiple trips to the bank daily, Bail Bond meetings from which I also have to travel to audit bondsmen, committee meetings, and public awareness presentations to various organizations. $180 does not sustain my requirements. Please consider moving me up to $1200 per year. Currently there are seven employees receiving 1200 per year, being the fourth smallest amount on my graph. Please grant me the same consideration you give others.

Comm. Carter: No questions - I believe your requests are very reasonable. I wanted to thank you publicly for your work on the Bail Bond Board and also on the Denton County Housing Finance Corp. She is relatively new on the housing corporation but has handled extensive responsibilities well. I know Bail Bond has also taken a lot of your time. Thank you for your stewardship with both of these tasks.

Judge Horn: You are required by law to be on the Bail Bond Board, correct?

Ms. Brown: Yes.

Judge Horn: Is there a car allowance in the Bail Bond Board Budget?
Ms. Brown: No Ma'am.

Comm. Carter: There is money generated by this board - average of $4500 per. That is from a two-year fee of $500 per bail bondsman times 18 bonding companies presently on the board. Our expenditures average $1800 per year for court reporter and a few miscellaneous expenses with the balance going into the General Fund. No one else is granted a car allowance.

Judge Horn: But if our treasurer is the only one mandated to travel for auditing purposes….

Comm. Carter: The attorney for the board also travels extensively so we might be setting a bad precedent. I believe we should cover the treasurer's expense as we do every other elected official.

Ms. Stewart: Next is Cynthia Mitchell, County Clerk, Page A-2 and Page 1 of 10 on the Changes Sheet.

Ms. Cynthia Mitchell, Denton County Clerk: I am pleased to tell you that I am here today to appeal only one decision of our Budget Director. My initial budget request was for just under three million for this coming budget year which was cut by approximately $200,000, to a little over 2.7 million. I am requesting a Senior Clerk in our Recording Department. This department facilitates all the recordings and filings of property records, birth & death certificates, passports and marriage licenses, as well as assisting the public. There has been tremendous growth in this department and I invite all of you to come and witness for yourself the continual flow of traffic. In 2002, this department recorded 169,000 instruments -
not pages, but documents. In 2003, we are on schedule to file and record a minimum of 185,000 - a conservative estimate. Growth in the last three years has been from 12 to 20%. This is not seasonal work-it is busy year around and continually growing. The number of recorded instruments does not account for the birth & death certificates, passports and marriage licenses which are revenue generators.
Our current deposits from Real Property filings' alone from January 1, 2003 to July 3, 2003 are $2,565,975.80. The population growth of our county is directly linked to the growth in this office. I am proud to come before each of you asking for this position because it is an honest need and I can honestly say we have done our part in increasing the efficiency and efficacy of this department before coming to you with this request.
Innovations have included remodeling, for easier work-flow, automating functions, re-organizing staff assignments, implementing flex-time - not counting work-hours on Saturday necessary just to keep up with the work load. Two legislatures ago, County Clerks were given the right to file property documents electronically, so we are projecting for this next year to begin e-filing and e-recording. To accommodate, we are re-designing our entire process of recording, to save time and money. Even with this process, we cannot foresee being able to meet our workload demands.
Granted, the results of our not being able to meet our workload demands may not be as glamorous or "headline" catching as the DA or Sheriff's office. But our hardworking, tax-paying citizens will be delayed in the selling, buying or refinancing of their property - perhaps not to the impediment of their property rights but it would certainly have an effect. Any delay in getting property records into the system delays title companies which delays the entire process. Not until these documents are filed and recorded by our office do they become official and open for public viewing.
We have accomplished a lot with the staff I have but currently we are behind - not severely, but these next few months are heavy months in the property industry. This $30,000 request is, I believe, minimal to accommodate for this growth.

Ms. Stewart: This request falls in my top priority.

Ms. Stewart: Next is Amy Phillips, Director of Human Resources on Page A-5 & 6 and Page 1 of 10.

Ms. Phillips, Director of Human Resources: I am not asking for a Staff Development Coordinator as I asked for every year and thought I was going to ask for this morning. I have come up with some ways to do most of the requisite training without this position. We can use other resources we have here in the county with the cooperation of other departments and do the training without a budget impact this year - not that this will solve the problem indefinitely but at lease for this year.
My appeal is on Page A-6 regarding Training & Education of my own staff. My staff has to act as "internal consultants" for all other departments at all levels. For this, they need on-going training because a lot of their consulting has to deal with employment laws which change all the time. Added to that is case law which changes the interpretation of the actual law. For instance, last year we were fortunate to get a lot of training regarding the law's changes in HIPAA from PEBC, which cost was included in our administrative costs and could have been much higher from an outside consultant. This year we expect the Fair Labor Standard's Act to be revised for the first time in 37 years. This could have a huge effect on the county. My training budget has had money transferred into it every year. With my smaller budget this year, I won't have money to transfer into training next year. Please increase my Training & Education line item for a total impact of $3,475.

Ms. Stewart: Next is Sandy Thurman for Pedi-Place. She has a handout. [Please refer to July 25th in the Budget Workshop manual.]

Ms. Thurman: My hand-out is called "Texas on the Brink" - how Texas ranks among the fifty states. These are statistics from various government organizations unbiased as to Democrat or Republican. On Page Two, we are first in the percentage of population without health care. Page Four we are first in the percentage of uninsured children. But, in Denton County, you have Pedi-Place which hopefully can make a difference for the children in our community. Pedi-Place has doubled the number of exam rooms from 6 to 13 with an increase in our providers from three to six. We're expecting, with some funding help, to hire a doctor by October 1. We've always had visiting doctors, which are increasing, but this will be a first for having one on-staff.
As you know, the legislature cut 5% across-the-board on Medicaid and CHIP. That hurts. IN Denton County, there are only six or seven doctors taking Medicaid and CHIP patients now. Cook's Children, the CBO for Denton County through the Health Dept., is projecting four of those doctors will opt off in the next three months. The 5% cut will directly affect Pedi-Place. The expansion was necessary to meet our continually growing needs. Right now, we are turning away 15-20 children everyday. We are in a county with no county hospital and no mass transit.
We also partner with North Central Community College so students can use Pedi-Place to get their internship - the only place they can do this in Denton County. We'll be seeing perhaps 12 this coming semester. Pedi-Place also takes 8-10 nurse practitioners to intern from TWU and the University of North Texas at Arlington. Senator Nelson requested us to immunize 9,000 high-school students so in April and May of this year, we partnered with Blue Cross Care Van at LISD and accomplished this task. Senator Nelson is very proud of our feat.
We have also been the leaders on the Steering Committee of the Denton County Health Community Coalition seeking solutions and models to bring health care to our communities. There is a grant forthcoming for a million dollars that our Congressman, Dr. Burgess, would like for Denton County to get part of, for improved communication amongst our four hospitals and all of our health care facilities.
Pedi-Place is also in the State Healthy Community Coalition which is focusing on the widespread problem of obesity in children. They say it is the first time in history when the parents will be out-living their children. We are actively working to teach parents about good nutrition and exercise.
Also, we are on the Texas State's Strategic Health Partnership. This is one of the biggest honors I have ever received. I am co-chair along with a gentleman in Galveston.

Dr. Sanchez, head of the Texas Department of Health, said the following: "Pedi-Place is an example of how health care should be done in the State of Texas", adding that if every county had such an organization, our ranking as a state would not be in the shape it is today.
Our budget this year is $876,000 and going to one million with the new facility - that is all in overhead. Cutting us down this next year from $70,000 to $50,000 is a big percentage cut. We do not expect an increase or even the 5% to make-up the state's shortfall. We ask for you to continue our $72,000 to $75,000 funding. Our expansion was debt free. City of Lewisville provided our furnishings, equipment, copiers, etc. We invite all of you to our ribbon cutting on August 14th at 5 PM. We are doing what President George encouraged all to do - a collaboration of government, not-for-profits, and corporations.

[Dr. Mark Holt of Lewisville spoke in support of Pedi-Place.]

Ms. Stewart: J.P. # 4 withdrew their appeal request so next up is

Constable Dotson, Pct. # 1 on Page A-144 and Page 7 of 10.

Constable Dotson, Pct. # 1: I want to go on record that we still need another deputy as I have requested during this and previous budgets but I am not appealing that. I understand this year's budget constraints. I am asking for you to make a part-time position into a full-time one at an impact of $12,477. This is critical to the basic operation of my office. When our full-time employee is off sick, or in training, vacation, etc., this person could fill-in, rather than pulling off a street a higher paid position, a deputy. I would appreciate your granting me this request.

Ms. Stewart: His request is also in my top priority.

Ms. Stewart: That concludes our appeals. There are some changes I would like to point out. On Page 3 of 10 on the Changes Sheet, we will be removing JP # 4. Regarding the Medical Examiner, his request of $4,500 will be changed to $2,750. On Page 4 of 10, under the Denton County Courts Building, we will add another increase of $7,000 - Repairs and Maintenance - for the expansion of Records Management. Also, in Records Management on Page 9 of 10, we will be moving both those items - service contract and new hire - out of line item # 41.20.45 into line item 01.10.61 - that will be from out of the Preservation Fund to the General Fund. We will add the Pedi-Place request of $22,000 to 25,000 to our Changes Sheet. And the last point to cover - the Elected Officials Survey Average. The recent hand-out is an update on our earlier information. We have tried to clarify what is salary and what is car allowance. We were able to verify with the Comptroller's Office that the court could choose to provide car allowances to the district judges as part of their cap. We need a decision from the court this coming Tuesday on Elected Official Salaries.

Comm. White: I have my proposed cuts ready to present. Did the court want to discuss those first?

Judge Horn: Those should be discussed at our next meeting on Tuesday.
Comm. White: I will email that to you, Donna, and I will provide it to the other Commissioners.

Judge Horn: Be sure to communicate that to Comm. Jacobs. We are adjourned.

This set of minutes for Budget Workshop of July 25, 2003, was compiled by Deputy Clerk Kathleen Bransford and reviewed by County Clerk Cynthia Mitchell.