1.
(ACTION) Roll Call The Chair called the meeting to order at 5:20pm. All members were present. CPO Tucker, ACPO Johnston, M. Lui represented the Dept.
2.
(ACTION) Review and approval of January 26, 2004 meeting minutes. Action on the minutes was moved to the end of the meeting, at which time it was tabled to the next meeting. (public comments) There was none.
3.
(DISCUSSION/ACTION) Review and possible recommendations to full Commission regarding budgetary issues and the Dept’s proposals for the Dept’s ’04-’05 FY budget. The Chief read over the document that was prepared for the meeting (see attachment to agenda on website). The overview gave a look at the major deficit areas in the budget. The Dept has been ordered to reduce a minimum of $2.1 mil. but be prepared for another $6.6 mil contingency cut.
Comm Hale said there needs to be discussion about how the Dept will support its community partners once TANF is gone. The Chief said she is meeting with the Mayor Friday (13th) and will seek his guidance on what to do.
The Chief said that they are proposing to lease/sell parts of Log Cabin Ranch /Hidden Valley Ranch land, and hoping to raise $1.5 mil from it. She said that there are no restrictions to such an action.
To reduce OT, they are re assigning two counselors to JH duties, which will reduce OT about $200K.
She went on to recount the discussion at the Bd of Supervisors during May of ’03 when it was agreed that WC was out of control (peace officers get “4850” and can be out a year). The Controller’s office was directed to work with this Dept on the WC issue. They came up with a manual of best practices. The Dept has been given the permission to hire a 1244 (someone with WC experience), specifically to work with WC cases. In the meantime the Chief asked DHR to have someone transferred over to begin this work, while the Dept completes its own hiring.
She went on to other items in the doc. Eg. the emergency notification system, which was costing $1500 a month to subscribe to a GIS service. The system has never needed to be utilized.
Comm Hale asked for a list of vacant positions in the Dept. He also asked the Dept to get the “experts” to present the case to the Commission, as to the best possible ‘scenario’ for reducing WC.
He asked what is in place for emergency notification now?
Comm Hale asked what the agreement was between 790 and the City. Henrietta Lee said that the City promised it would not lay off any 790 workers if they agreed to a 7.5% give back. This Dept was the only Dept in the City, which chose to lay off 790 workers (passed in Dec., effective in March). This is a violation of that agreement.
Comm Hale asked the Chief to get an opinion from the City Attorney about this.
The Chief said her understanding was that the agreement was that the Dept would not lay off anyone from Log Cabin Ranch this fiscal year. She agreed to get an opinion from the City Attorney tomorrow morning. Comm Bonilla asked for a written response from them.
Comm Hale questioned the potential success of achieving $1.5 mil from realty sales of LCRS/HVR. The Chief was unable to answer the question. She said, “I have inquired with the Mayor’s office about that and will be getting further information. To be very honest with you, we do need that quantified. We do need to know how much they will accept, and the issue at hand is also is that, we don’t currently have a buyer in mind. If we had a buyer in mind, and an assessment and everything, and knew that we had somebody to buy it, that would be more concrete. So, if you will, what I’m trying to do here is to mitigate the city’s further loss, in terms of staff, or in terms of our budget, by putting up for sale this property. I don’t know what else to say.”
Comm Bonilla asked if there’s any indication from the Bd of Supervisors that they would be willing to approve such a sale, given their disfavor for this in the past. The Chief said they have not had any discussions with the Bd. She said there is talk of possibly transferring some property to the Superior Courts.
Comm Ricci asked for an itemized list and description of all vacant positions in the Dept, and an itemized list and description of all filled positions in the Dept. She also asked for a report on Don Sanders’ visit to another ranch, to see how they handle renting of bed space, and how that might help us with LCRS. She asked if the Dept has anything in writing from the City Attorney’s office regarding any prohibitions on sale/lease of LCRS/HVR.
The Chief said that, “the vacant position list has shrunk. One of the reasons why it has shrunk is that we have been mandated through the budget office to reduce the number of positions that are vacant so that we can reduce our attrition rate. So while we may have had 15 – 20 vacant positions, we now have… it’s still in process.” “That was one of the instructions we were given, that those positions that had not been filled for several years, that the Mayor’s office, the budget, has mandated that we release them. There will not be as many vacant positions as you have been seeing in the past. And that reduces our attrition rate and has a better impact on our budget.”
As for the computers, she said she understands that almost everybody in the Dept has a computer.
Comm Hale commented that the Dept’s HR staff was increased to take on testing of on call candidates, because the City’s DHR was not doing it for us. But this hasn’t worked out and now he questioned whether we needed to maintain the full complement of staff in the HR division. He wanted the Dept to respond to that.
He asked if there is a chance to have counselors be eligible for IVe dollars. M. Lui said that the duties have to be foster care related. He asked for a copy of the IVe regulations. Lui reported that he heard that the definition of foster care related services might be further restricted, narrowed. They are talking about possibly an audit of these programs. This may lead to a reduction of funds.
B. Johnston commented that it might be possible to include counselors in reimbursable work but it may not lead to a savings if more people need to be hired to take up their hall duties.
Comm Hale asked again why the Dept’s HR wasn’t part of the proposed cuts. The Chief said they could look into that.
The upcoming meetings were reviewed. The next Finance Comm mtg will be Friday Feb. 13, then again on Tuesday, Feb. 17th, and then a special meeting of the full Commission on Feb 18th.
Comm Hale asked that the speakers (especially those from the unions) who had requests, to put them in writing. Comm Bonilla asked the secretary to request the attendance of M. Baumgartner at the upcoming Finance Comm mtgs.
The Chief asked if the agenda would remain the same. Comm Ricci said she’d like to keep items 3-5 on the agenda and deal with them as they come up.
The secretary asked if the Dept proposal would be the same on the 13th. Comm Hale said that if the Dept has new information that prompts an alternative plan, they’re free to make those adjustments.
Comm Ricci asked about the implications of submitting other proposed budget adjustments. D. Kamalanathan said that whatever the Dept submitted must meet the 4 criteria. If items are substituted, they must be of equal or greater value than those items deleted.
Ques: is there a penalty for missing the deadline of the 20th. Ans: there is no financial penalty. The deadline is firm. The Controller’s office will record those who do not meet their deadline. Discussions will be ongoing and adjustments are expected well into March/April.
The Chief asked Comm Hale if the Dept wanted to come back with an amended proposal, for the Feb. 13th meeting, would that be okay with the Committee. Ans. Yes.
Comm Hale asked for a report on how the Dept decides the level of staffing it needs. He wanted a comparison of how other jurisdictions, other public agencies do their workload assessments and allocations, and the guidelines followed by this Dept.
Ques: what are the projections for retirement. Ans: 5 in this next fiscal year, across the board. Ques: is there any incentive to retire? Are retirees eligible for on-call hiring?
The Chief said they were attempting to increase the process to put more on call names on the list, to make a list of about 30 names.
B. Johnston said that the Dept had hired 3 retirees, which save the Dept money.
The Chief commented that the Public Defender’s proposal to put a moratorium on CYA commitments would have a horrendous impact on this Dept. She said that if not CYA, they would sit in juvenile hall, “in the five units we have that are already filled, that we are staffing, and it would increase our overtime, and it would be a horrendous impact on this Dept, budgetarily. I also have a deep concern about the fact that we already do not have a place, an appropriate resource for those individuals who have mental illness, those with mental problems, who act out criminal acts of violence on the community and on victims. We already do not have an appropriate facility for that. Those youth also go to CYA.”
Comm Hale said that ultimately it is the courts that decide CYA commitments. He is not in opposition to the proposal.
(public comments) Rich Perino, PO, said that the claim that staff is taking advantage of WC rules to defraud the city. If there is fraud here, why isn’t the City Attorney taking any action against individuals. He questioned the motivation behind City Hall not approving the Dept hiring temporary counselors to avoid OT. He also asked why the Dept needed to hire a new person to deal with WC when there’s already a city agency that does that. The Dept’s proposed positions for lay-offs are suffering because of the failure of others to do their job. He referred to a lawsuit brought by PO Torrance Bynum, asking for OT for working in the hall. Perino said that no one knows the outcome of that suit, except that now POs are not allowed to work in juvenile hall.
Henrietta Lee, local 790, said that all the layoffs are clerical support staff, leaving very few behind to take up the work. She questioned the legality of this, when the City and union struck an agreement last year to save the City money, on condition of no lay offs. She said that of the previous position cuts, only one was an empty slot, the rest were actual people losing their jobs.
Lonnie Holmes, local 21, spoke against the lay-offs. He suggested looking at all the empty positions before starting to lay off workers. He also said the Dept needs to assess its IT needs for the future, in view of lost revenues, and programs. He said it made no sense to spend so much on an evaluation tool for diminished programming. He also said there needs to be an overall management audit to see how the money has been spent over the years. He used the eg. of community programs that used to be supported by general funds and now rely on TANF; where are the general funds now?
He encouraged the Committee to look at other areas before laying off staff.
Barbara Ross, PO, also echoed the need for the clerical staff that’s being proposed for cuts. She said they are front line customer service staff
Margaret Walsh, PO, said that the switchboard operator is a critical person that often deals with irate and antagonistic or stressed individuals, and has to route calls to the proper people. This is an important duty.
She said that perhaps the Dept’s human resources division should be looked at for reduction, since we are not going to be hiring much, and they haven’t been able to effectively implement any disciplinary actions on staff. She said that this would be a more reasonable place to cut from, rather than from frontline workers like the ones proposed.
Jubilee Tsui, PO, questioned why so much money is used to support CARC. There needs to be more POs to do the work. She also supported the clerical support staff.
Heidi Isaacs, PO, questioned the conflict of interest on the part of some Probation Commissioners. She suspected that possibly decisions were biased toward community, because of the connections commissioners have. She spoke in support of the clerical support. She asked for an answer to the conflict question, at some point.
LaRita Hall, secretary, said the budget really needed to be looked at before the proposed cuts are made. There is already a shortage. She asked how the staff could be re organized to handle those tasks.
Ishmael Burris, Youth Commission, encouraged the committee to remember that community based orgs provided language and culturally appropriate services to youth. He asked about the facilities maintenance costs of the dept, and was told he could write to the dept for an answer; that they couldn’t reply here.
NTanya Lee, Coleman Advocates, inquired why the savings to WC couldn’t be more aggressively projected, to reach another $200K. She urged the Commission to take a leadership role to initiate a citywide overture to Sacramento to reconsider taking TANF back.
Kayla O’Neil, Youth Justice Committee, said that the Youth Commission and the Committee would continue to observe the Dept’s budget process, and act accordingly.
Ritch Perino, asked about the potential of increasing Title IVe reimbursements, which bring PO salary costs down to about $20K. He asked if counselors could be utilized in such a way that made their activities eligible for this subsidy. He suggested merging the two probation depts., or shifting adult POs over to juveniles, and getting reimbursements for their salaries. Even if caseworkers from CBOs could be hired as POs to do casework for the Dept, if their activities qualified for Title IVe reimbursement, this is cheaper than straight contracting out.
He said that the Mayor’s office is at fault for not allowing us to fill the as needed positions.
4.
(DISCUSSION) Fiscal review of Log Cabin Ranch operations and its potential impact on FY ’04-’05 budgeting. This item was tabled till the next meeting (public comments)
5.
(DISCUSSION/ACTION) Fiscal impact of merging classes 8320 and 8321 counselor. This item was tabled till the next meeting (public comments)
6.
(ACTION) Adjournment ACPO Bill Johnston requested that the meeting be adjourned in the memory of Liz Aragon, a long time, highly respected counselor in Juvenile Hall, who passed suddenly this morning.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 7:28 pm,
In loving memory of Liz Aragon
