Judicial Committee Meeting Transcript – 8/13/2018 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/13/2018 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/13/2018 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [2:39:15 PM] >> Flannigan:I'm going to call to order the meeting of the judicial committee. We now have a quorum present. It is 2:39 P.M. We're in council chambers August 13, 2018. We're going to go ahead and start with approving and reviewing the minutes from the meeting in April. >> Garza: I move approval. >> Flannigan: Councilmember Garza moves approval. Second from councilmember Casar. Without objection those minutes are approved. We will move on to citizens communication. Is Zachary Hawthorne in the chamber? No. Carlos Leone. Mr. Leone, you'll have three minutes. >> Okay. Before I start by the way you know your written policy says two minutes. So I'm glad it's three, but I would appreciate in the future your written policy matches that so this way I can prepare for exactly what your time limit is. >> Flannigan: All right. >> Carlos Leone. August, Texas, August 13, 2018, to speak what's right. Foremost gracias for letting me speak truth and hand evidence to you via Monica [indiscernible] To review municipal court and related matters per city code 2-5-103b6d. Based on their words and actions against me, the office of the attorney general and the Texas justice system, assistant city attorneys chase reed gamilion and Kerry grace should be fired and criminally prosecuted asap for their blatant professional and criminal misconduct, which the evidence is right in front of you now. [2:41:15 PM] The same is likely for clerk of court Mary Jane grub because there have been multiple times -- types and instances of tampering with governmental records related to the Austin municipal court record-keeping system, including its online system, the use of digital different unofficial electronic seals on digital documents and an unofficial looking electronic clerk of court signature to allegedly create, maintain, and enforce and unofficial fake justice track as part of an unconstitutional illegal 2-track justice system, one real and one fraudulent. They and it must be legally stopped yesterday. Also, it's good now that the time limit for speaking is now moving to two to three minutes and I also want to express my displeasure with justice commission member Casar having left the dais when I was here to address him as well as you too. He should be able to look me in the eye when I speak and not walk away. You are a public servant, sir, just like the rest of your commission members. You answer to all of us. Remember that. That's the law. Texas penal code 1.07a41a. Don't forget it. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. Thank you, lord. God bless Texas, the united States of America, constitutional law and truth, and above all, god's word. [ Applause ] >> Flannigan: Thank you, Mr. Leone. I don't see Gus Pena. Is he hiding in the corner somewhere? I don't see him. Great, Jordan fraytaking. Fratag. >> Good afternoon, committee members. I'll be brief. My name is Jordan fratag and [2:43:18 PM] I'm past president of municipal services bureau, a company that provides services to the city, and I just wanted to take a quick minute to introduce ourselves and tell you about us. We're a local company that has been in Austin headquartered here over 27 years. We also employ over 450 austin-based residents. And we feel that we share some of the exact same values of this city. Our employee base is made up of over 70% minorities and 70% females. Our minimum hourly wage is 12% higher than the Austin living wage, and then of course certainly people are -- get raises and bonuses, but that's just the minimum we offer. All of our employees are offered full benefits, and we offer several volunteer opportunities for our employees as well to give back to the community. We work with the homeless population. We've worked with salvation Army, capital area food bank. I also wanted to point out that being a local vendor we're able to offer some benefits to the city where we offer walk-in payments for any of your citizens trying to make payments to us. We also offer a daily courier service that allows for daily deposit into the city's bank account. We offer local face-to-face ability, just being that we're down the road. And, again, just trying to be real quick. I know you have a busy agenda today. I'm here to answer questions but mostly just to tell you thank you for our working relationship and wanted to introduce myself. Thank you. >> Flannigan: All righty, thank you. We have a number of items on our agenda. Court facility update last and then go into executive session to close the meeting. So we'll start with item number 3, which is the presentation of the certification. >> Good afternoon. My name is landra, I'm the vice president of the Texas [2:45:18 PM] courts clerk association and also serve on the education committee. I would like to welcome my friend and colleague judge Bonnie Townsend with the. The region seven director for the Texas municipal court association so you've got both associations here today. We appreciate the opportunity to visit your beautiful city on such an important day for Mr. Laurence Glick. I had the pleasure of meeting Laurence when he was doing his level III observation and he visited the municipal court. We're very excited to be here today. I want to tell you a little bit about the -- what it takes to become a certified municipal court clerk. I will be as brief as possible but I wrote this down so I don't forget anything. There's a lot of associations involved in this. So in order to qualify for the title of certified municipal court clerk, a clerk must complete the requirements for level I, level II, and level three. These requirements include completing 40 hours of continuing education, passing a four-hour exam at each level. Additionally a clerk must attend a 24 hour assessment clinic, complete 40 hours of court observation, submit a journal on those observations and attend a 12 hour court administrator seminar. Laurence's involvement in this course of city confirms his dedication to the judicial system and city of Austin. So on behalf of the Texas court clerks association in conjunction with the Texas municipal court clerks association, the education center and Texas state university in San Marcus I'm pleased to present Laurence Glick with the certified municipal court clerk certificate. Congratulations, Laurence. [ Applause ] >> Flannigan: Congratulations, Mr. Glick. Thank you for your servings and dedication to your city. >> Thank you. >> Flannigan: Thank you. Item number 4, update on the status of our newly appointed judges, training, hours worked, types of [2:47:19 PM] dockets. >> [Off mic] >> Flannigan: Yeah, let's do it. Let's take a photo. >> Flannigan:okay. Now we're ready for our judicial update. >> Good afternoon. My part of this is going to be pretty short. This is about the training and the status of the new judges, and I have to say [2:49:21 PM] this has been rather easy for me because this is the best, most qualified freshman class of judges ever, including when I became a judge. They're much smarter than I was. We started this by updating our local bench book, which was an undertaking that began in February, anticipating that, and it's updating all the forms. And judge Thomas was a huge help with this. Each of the judges were asked to do a minimum of 25 hours observing other judges, and from personal experience, I believe that this is the best way to learn. Some did more than that. They were also asked you to through computer training. That's gems. And to take the Texas municipal court education center's 16 hour regional judges seminar. This is the basics of practice and to get them up to date on current issues. Those that wished to preside at the downtown Austin community court were given the option to go over and observe there. Some took a webinar on the most recent laws related to jail commitments and indigency and some were -- either did self-study or webinar on the code of judicial conduct. And this is the hours that they have worked thus far. And you can see -- and I put in time. And have hit the ground running. The only judge that did not do the minimum of 25 hours was judge celig and she didn't really need to because she's been a judge before and just needed to get up to speed. That's where we are on the training. Is there any questions? >> Flannigan: No. That sounds fantastic. I'm glad to hear that our new slate of judges is doing so well. >> Yes. And thank you for all of your patience and effort in that regard. >> Flannigan: Likewise, likewise. [2:51:21 PM] Want to come up, Mary Jane? >> Good afternoon. I am -- no. Forward. One more. There we go. Thank you. I'm here to discuss some of the contracts that are going to be coming before council for approval within the next 12 months. I didn't do a complete list because we have a couple they have multiple years left on them, so the council won't see them in the near future. And a couple that are on auto- renewal. But the first one is with the Texas department of motor vehicles. What that is is a program authorized by the state that allows us to put holds on vehicle registrations for individuals who are out of compliance with court orders. Once those individuals come in and appear on their case, we do lift those holds. The next one is for -- it's a collection contract with msb, municipal services bureau. That is another state-authorized program in which we send cases that are delinquent or out of clients with court orders to a third-party collection agency. This is somewhat of a unique contract, in that it does not cost the city any money at all. This is a court cost that the defendants pay when their case is sent to collections. So once we collect that money, if we collect the money, then the money is sent to msb for their 30%. We have two that we don't -- we are going to be going through direct purchasing over the next 12 months or so. One is a lobby management system. That's a crowd cuing system. When you come in, you take a ticket, your number is called by the clerk, go to the customer service window. [2:53:22 PM] We currently have one, probably about 20 years old, at the end of its life cycle and reserve to update it because it -- we need to update it because it no longer has any maintenance left on it, as well as does not provide us the statistics that we would like. The next one is for an auto-dialer. What that is is it's a system that calls defendants and gives them reminder notices for court dates or any delinquencies, payment plans, anything like, that it's an auto-dialer and contacts defendants by voice and text. We also have a digital recording system in the courtrooms and that's where all the courtroom proceedings must be recorded. We currently have one that, again, is out of date. It doesn't work properly. It doesn't interface and work properly. We had to cancel trials due to nonperformance. The customer service is below par on that so we're looking for a new vendor, a contractor on the direct purchasing contract. We also have red flags. That's a K mart red light, I'm sure you're aware of the km mart red lights in Austin. The contract has been renewed for five more years but the current contract allows for 15 cameras and the city currently has ten. We've been working with A.P.D. And transportation to identify other locations so we can have the full 15 cameras so although it won't come to council for approval you definitely will get communication on that about where the new intersections are located. And there's one more that I did not put on here but I wanted to mention it's called omnibase, similar to scaflaw and collections in that it's a tool for court to address defendants in on this compliance with court orders. Very similar to scaflaw in that it allows us to put a hold on the defendant's driver's license if they're out of compliance. [2:55:22 PM] Any questions? >> Flannigan: So part of why I asked for this review is to give an opportunity for the committee to talk about the contracts, especially the ones related to collections and the delinquency accounts to ensure it's complying with many of the things we set out in how we did our judicial review and appointments. We wanted to ensure specifically -- specifically what struck me was the risk of someone losing their transportation because they couldn't pay and then does that then mean they can't get to their job so they can say? >> Right. >> Flannigan: It just kind of spurred a conversation about wanting to open up the conversation in case there was a longer set of questions from folks. >> What I would add about all three of these programs is the way that our court administers them is that if someone comes to in to address their case the holds are lifted immediately. We don't wait until the case is terminated, until they get done paying. I mean, the idea -- the goal is to get the defendant to come in and address their delinquency and once they appear then the hold is released. And of course they still have all their rights intact. If there's any indensy issue they'll see a judge and it will be addressed immediately. >> Flannigan: For the public we're going through items 4 and 6 and soon to be seven as part of this longer presentation. This is item 6 on the agenda? >> These are just for Austin municipal court. The next slide is for downtown community court, which Pete will talk about. It's the contracts that the ACC administers. >> Casar: I think just for purposes of our committee, I appreciate us getting a chance to look at these and understand what's coming. I think something that's been great about the committee is we've been really deliberative about all of the work at our municipal court, giving it that level of attention and trying to figure out how we [2:57:22 PM] can make sure that everything is aligned from the appointment of judges to these contracts to the values we've set out in prior resolutions. And so we postponed I think the DMV contract in order to get some data about how effective it is and how it's working and on the collections contract I'd be interested in the same data, to make sure that -- how it is -- you know, I understand that we have to collect debt as the city and as a court just like we have to appoint judges. But understanding best how it is we do that -- understanding best how it is we're currently doing that and if there's any updates or changes to how we do it that need to be made in order to align with the values of this committee and the council I think is what's of interest to me. So getting similar data to which you requested on the DMV stuff idea would be helpful as we evaluate collections as well. >> That's not a problem. We should have that data, scaflaw, within the next couple of weeks and we'll go ahead and start collecting the same data for the collections contract and send that to you as well. >> Flannigan: It's been my experience that the court generally does a good job on these things but it's a good opportunity as we look at all of the court procedures and getting a check-in with the new council, new committee structure and new set of judges so, you know, I know it can be a scary thing to be asked before a committee of council or council in whole. This is an opportunity for us to both hear the good work you're doing and then elevate it to the next level together. I don't want anybody to be freaking out. Councilmember Garza, do you have anything to add? I think we can move on to downtown community court items? Thank you, Mary Jane. >> Flannigan:there you go. >> Good afternoon, councilmembers, Peter Valdez, court administrator over the community court. I'm going to begin our [2:59:23 PM] presentation by talking about the contracts that are going to up for renewal in this coming fiscal year. Actually, one of them is on your August 30 agenda, and that's the managed service organization, a contract with integral care. And that contract is -- was created so that that organization serves as a third- party funds administrator for the court. We pay them a 12% fee each year to manage $392,000 and they subcontract vendors for detox, treatment, temporary housing, and counseling services. So that, like I said, is going to be coming up for renewal in fy19 but it's on your August 30 agenda for that. The other item that's going to come up on your August 30 agenda is a host item regarding $195,000 that public health is going to add to the host contract that we administer. And that funding is what they're calling flexible funding, that's so that the host team will be access to dollars to purchase ids and birth certificates and basic needs items that they're in need of while they're helping the people out on the field. So that's going to be on your August 30 agenda as well. The remaining contracts, they're all support service contracts. They all provide either housing treatment, temporary housing, emergency housing, case management, plan living assistance network of central Texas provides case management as well. So in general they're all [3:01:24 PM] support services for the people that are involved in our intensive case management program. So anything that our case managers can't do, we connect them to the these contracts. So any questions about that? >> Flannigan: Any questions? Thank you. >> Okay. The next portion of my presentation is a brief time line of what our advisory committee has done beginning 2010, which is the year that I took over as the court administrator, all the way through present day. Sarah Clark -- >> Flannigan: I had a chance to review your presentation and so I encourage you to hit the highlights. >> Okay. >> Flannigan: There's a lot of dense information in the slides and we don't have to hit every single point. >> Sure. Also, Sarah Clark, who is the current chair of our board is going to be speaking to some of the slides as well. So, in general, in 2010 -- does this. . . In 2010, councilmember Reilly asked for the advisory board to do a review of what the court was accomplishing at that time. And out of that review came some changes that were recommended. One of the changes was that our court only handle trials for people that are non-homeless -- I'm sorry, that are homeless, and the people that are non-homeless, their trials would be transferred to municipal court. The advisory committee at that time felt that this would give us more time to focus on the needs of the homeless population and would take away the -- the large amounts of trials that we were setting for people that weren't part of our [3:03:24 PM] priority population at that time. They also identified their frequent defend ebb -- defenderpopulation, people with 25 or more cases with at least one active case in the last two years. All of the frequent defenders are homeless. Some of them chronically. Some of them have mental health and substance abuse issues. The majority of them do, anyway. And what the committee found was that this group of individuals, which was at that time 267 individuals, was using up the majority of our resources. So they thought it would be beneficial for us to focus on stabilizing individuals from that group as opposed to just assessing and referring people out to services. They felt that we should really just focus on stabilizing them ourselves and also start looking at enhancing our contracts to meet the needs of that group of individuals. Out of that conversation also came the request for us to look at what it would take for us to do dockets on the weekends. At that time, it was determined that it would not be something that would be possible because a lot of the social service providers would not be available on the weekends or would not be able to admit people on the weekends. We're going to touch on this issue when Sarah Clark comes up because we're revisiting that option and looking at what it would cost at this point for us to do something like that. The committee also did a lot of data analysis. And, again, they just found that we were really spending a lot of time docketting and redocketting the cases of the individuals that were part of the frequent defender population. So it would really benefit the community and the court [3:05:25 PM] if we could focus on trying to stabilize that population. Referrals from service providers, I'm going to touch on this in another slide, but the city had gone into a contract -- an interlocal agreement with Travis county to create project recovery through integral care. At that time our court and the county's court that -- run by judge hond guard hongarden, were referring to this people, designed specifically to address people with multiple public intoxication arrests and enhancements. Essentially, the county, because the enhancements were occurring on their end, the county was directing who was entering the program. And the committee felt that we should also have some say in who should be able to go into that program so that we could get some frequent defenders in there. They recommended at that time to council to help us restructure the referral process. And that happened out of those conversations as well. Lastly, they invited the center for court innovation to come and provide some technical assistance, help us figure out how we could better use our resources and be more productive and successful with the population that we were prioritizing. And they did. They came. They gave us some advice. And we apply -- we've applied basically everything that the committee and the center for court innovation had recommended to date. In 2011, we started adding case managers to our staff. Again, to really focus on addressing the needs of the [3:07:26 PM] frequent defender population. And as you see there, that's when the resolution for the referral process went before you all. In 2012, we were offered an opportunity to partner with caritas and the downtown Austin alliance and foundation communities to house 20 of our frequent defenders. We were able to house 20 frequent offenders through that program. Unfortunately, at the end of the program we had housed 40 because 20 of them had failed. So once the person was housed, the case management was taken over by foundation communities and caritas. So why the person failed or what happened with that person we're not sure. We just know that 50% of the individuals that we referred to that program failed. So we've learned a few things since then. Most importantly, that even after housing, the individuals need to receive support services, ongoing support services, and in some cases the service delivery has to remain intensive as well. Since 2012, we've also been -- or the committee has advocated for us to acquire a new facility because of the problems that we ourselves have had as well. The highlights of this are basically the emergency solutions grant collaborative with the Austin public health department. Through it we were able to acquire two more case managers. One housing locator and one housing assistance case manager. And we've to date housed about 50 people through that solutions grant. [3:09:29 PM] And the committee did some research around the Austin system for housing individuals, and no surprises, a lot of the individuals that we were prioritizing were going to be difficult to house because of their criminal histories. And, again, that advocacy for permanent supportive housing and housing first opportunities for our clients continued. The other highlight is that in 2014, we started receiving client testimonials at our advisory committee meetings. And since then, that has continued. And the feedback that we get from the committees is that it's very helpful to hear from the people experiencing the homelessness, and it's given them a lot of direction when they're recommending things to you all and budget and policy recommendations. We have Sarah Clark now. She is our current chair and has been the chair since 2015 and she'll be speaking to the last four slides. Thank you. >> Thank you, Pete. Good afternoon. I'm Sarah Clark. I've had the pleasure of being the chair of the downtown Austin community court advisory board since 2015. We changed the name from committee to board because we were the only board and commission that wasn't a board or commission, so that's one of the things I've accomplished since coming on board. When we -- we all first came in, we were all brand-new, except for Laurie Renteria. She was the 10-1 switch and she had been on I believe since the beginning, since the beginning. We were really grateful she was there to have history and context to what we were doing but mostly we were learning about what the court was doing and we spent that entire year, each [3:11:30 PM] meeting would be a different presentation forea different aspect of the -- from a different aspect of the court. We learned about what the case managers did. We learned about what the prosecutors did. We learned about the contracts. I took a tour and met everybody. So impressed with what everybody is doing over there. So impressed with the staff. I was on another board before, and I find that dealing with Pete and Susan, who is no longer here anymore, was just a breath of fresh air. Anything we wanted we got it the very next day. And so it's been a great experience. Let's see. So in that first year, it's on your slide, we got these presentations. There was some controversy about the no sit-no lie ordinance. So we had kind of both sides of the equation come and talk to us about the concerns about that. We ended up not taking any action, but got real familiar with what the issues were. Of course we recommended and are excited to be a part of the sobering center coming to be. Trying to to go in the court of this. Of course the budget is always an important part of it because the court needs money to operate and they always want our support for the numbers that they need. The other thing that we do at every meeting is -- and this has to do with the emergency solutions grant. It's a requirement of the grant, which I think is a fantastic one, a case manager, along with the client, comes in and gives a testimonial of how they got hooked up with the case manager, what was going on in their lives that got them there. Some of them actually have come before judge could have -- coffyand some have come in and said now I've got this house, very compelling [3:13:30 PM] stories for us to hear so we understand why we're there. Now I'm ready for the slide. This is where I requested to change the name from committee to board. And we would -- we also got to be a part of being in favor of the host team. And I think we did a resolution on that to say that we really wanted the host team to come and be. From what I hear that's a successful pilot program. We get updates on what's going on with the host team, what's going on with the sobering center. Always we get our est updates along with client testimonials. We started getting more update on data at this time to -- so that we could have a better idea of what was really going on, what kind of cases was judge coffy hearing, what kind of ordinances were being violated, what was the docket looking like and what was happening to those folks in a data-driven fashion. And we get those updates now every meeting. So that's for the data-driven folks on the board, I know it is very comforting to have those numbers. And then of course we worked on the budget again. Somebody wanted to hear about the boarding home issue, and so we had a whole presentation about that that I recall didn't take any action. So I'm ready for the next slide. This year has been -- this past year has been a struggle with attendance. We have -- we've always had at least two, maybe even at some point three vacancies, which makes it hard, as you can imagine, to have a quorum on a regular day. But then beyond that we've just had a really surprising amount of attendance problems. And our meetings are at 7:45 A.M. A lot of times folks are late so we start late and [3:15:32 PM] people have to be vessel so we have to end early so we lose a quorum. I feel like we haven't done things that we probably could have done this year because of that. But we did continue to monitor all the things that are listed on your slide. We did make a recommendation on the budget. And then we formed a working group to try to have some more measurable goals than we had in the past. Much of what we were doing before was educational and trying to figure out why we were there, and what the court was doing. And met with bill Bryce from the downtown Austin alliance and kind of brainstormed with him, brainstormed with the working group, and came up with the goals for the coming year that are on perhaps the next slide. Is there another slide? Right. And these are they. The exploring options and developing recommendations for expanding or enhancing the court are in three categories. That's the ideas that we have that both bill and some other folks think might be the most useful for the homeless community that we serve. One is to make it a homeless-only court is an option we want to look at. There are always two sides to every idea, and I'm sure some people wouldn't like that idea. So we're going to kind of look at all the different angles of that. Also expanding the geographical area of where the court operates. Maybe having mobile courts, a way for other areas of town to benefit from the kind of work that judge coffy and the case managers do. Then increasing the hours. Part of the thinking behind that is if folks are picked up because of, say, warrants on Friday evening and they have to go to jail to wait to see judge coffy on Monday and then by the time they get there they've spent all the time they need to spend and he just says, okay, bye, so he didn't get the [3:17:35 PM] opportunity to have the intervention that he tries to have with folks. We hear a lot about needing more money for stable housing. And so we want to explore funding options. We have some amazing folks on the board with all kinds of experience. We have Cordona basicallier from integral care, we've got Ann Howard. It's a very talented board, and so I think that we can -- when we're all there, really accomplish some things in that department. Last thing I've been wanting to work on ever since we started is public awareness of what we do because I don't think anybody hardly knows about community court and what it accomplishes. We've tried getting a Facebook page. We want to get some fliers. I just want the world to know that it is doing what it's doing and I think there the issue is funding also. We need what do you call it? A eft? A person, fte, to do this work because it's a lot of work to advertise something. That's all I have. I'm happy to answer your questions or hear your ideas. >> Flannigan: My understanding, speaking to some of the board members that there are opportunities for grants or other sources of funding that have been challenging for the court to access, and that's maybe a combination of bureaucracy and timing and whatever. It's been suggested maybe the court needs a little more autonomy to apply for and receive those grants. Is that something you're hearing or am I listening to the wrong grapevine? >> When you say the court needs more autonomy? >> Flannigan: -- As opposed to a longer process that maybe our 4 billion-dollar bureaucracy might throw in front of you. >> I have not heard that but there are folks that -- I guess Jennifer would be the best person to talk about this. [3:19:36 PM] >> Flannigan: It's just something to explore as we think about funding sources for the future and what funding sources we may not be tapping into beyond the general fund that could get us there. >> Clearly, that's absolutely something we need to focus on. >> Flannigan: Yeah. Do y'all have any questions? No? The other thing that just as a contemplation is whether or not the board should be reviewing broadly the municipal court and not just focused on the downtown court. That's not something I'm advocating for. It's just something I'm exploring to think if -- if adding that to your board's charter or job duties is something that would be beneficial or if it really is a mismatch with the intention of the board, just thinking through that. >> So we usually meet every other month. And as I said we've been having trouble accomplishing everything we want to accomplish for a variety of reasons. I think it might be a mismatch just because the talent that comes to our board is really focused on the homeless population and I feel like the municipal court at large, if you had an advisory board for them, that would bring a different -- >> Flannigan: More of a public safety commission than downtown advisory exercise? >> Off the top of my head, yeah. >> Flannigan: I think that's all the questions. Thank you. >> Thank you, all. >> Flannigan: Part of having briefings and presentations is to daylight the good work that the downtown court is doing and something for us to contemplate as we evaluate what our budget through the lens of our strategic outcomes, number 1 and number 2 of which are housing and homelessness, so those are very important elements. >> Thank you. >> Flannigan: Thank you for your service on the board. >> Thank you. It's easy for me to come. I'm kind of the downtown representative. My office is two blocks away. So any time. >> Flannigan: Excellent. So our last briefing should be -- before we go into executive session, item 5 on the court facility update. Come on, Alex. [3:21:42 PM] >> Alex Gail, interim offer for the office of real estate services. I apologize. I didn't make a powerpoint for today's meeting . But I did want to address some of the three items that were in that resolution. The first one being identify options, including leasing, building, and/or buying properties for the relocation of muni court, creating one regional facility serving both the north and one serving the south. Accessible by transit, parking, and prosecutors' access. So just to go into that a little bit, the south location we came to council back in April and may to have us move forward with negotiating and executing a lease with -- for ten years with the met center group. We would be responsible for utilities and janitorial services, ti from the landlord for $100 per square foot for 9.6 million and city to pay one point will million at the time of movement towards finish out. So we are still currently in negotiations with the landlord on that space. I know it's been several months that we've been working on those negotiations, still ironing out the lease details, some of the terms within the lease that we haven't been able to come to terms with. During that time period, our staff have been meeting with the met center's ownership staff, working through those terms. The muni court staff has been meeting with met center's architectural firm. I think they've met upwards of 20 times, approximately 20 times, going over all of the architectural details that the municipal court is looking for in that space. I'm trying to think what else. Within that, there was also discussion about the prosecutor's office, moving out of their space to some temporary space. So we're working with the [3:23:44 PM] prosecutors office at the cherry creek location, where they would be moving to a temporary space at that Ben white location at 5202 east Ben white about development service that little extra space that was going to allow them to move some ftes there, as well as moving some ftes to the current municipal court facility. When we originally spoke to you all, our original time frame we had was to execute the lease June 2018. What we're looking at now is hopefully having a lease executed September 2018. We brought it forward to council hoping to have build out complete by September 2018. What we're looking at right now, working with the met center group, is not until may 2019, may-june 2019, and then move in, when we originally brought this to council was October 2018 multiply what we're looking at now -- what we're looking at now is not until June 2019, for when we would possibly be able to move into that met center space. The north location, so as part of that item 1 within that resolution, we talked about the south location, and a north location. I think within that what we talked about with council is that we would bring an rfp out to build a north location. We haven't been able to proceed on that as we've been -- staff has spent most of their time working on this met center lease. But we are still -- the plans would be to do an rfp to find a permanent location for that north area. One for the south and then one for the north. So item 2 of the resolution talked about develop recommendations for the future use of the current Austin municipal site at 700 east seventh street. And then item 3 was identify options to relocate the [3:25:44 PM] downtown Austin community court. Being near transit and in a certain geographical locations, parking, storage, and colocating with municipal court service windows. Same with that one, we haven't had time to devote to that, but our plans still to move forward is to do an rfi, request for information, out to the public to possible sale of the municipal court, get cash, and have that developer bring options for a new downtown community court location within that whole rfi that we would go out to the public for. >> Flannigan: Okay. >> So those are the main three items? >> Flannigan: Any questions before we go into executive session? Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: Can you help us understanding why -- why is the negotiation taking so long? >> It's -- so when we originally were working with the owners and working fast to bring the item to council, there was many versions of the proposal, terms that we were -- that we received from the owners. And when we finally got the version that we presented to council, I think there was a misunderstanding between the owners and from us in the real estate department as to what all the items would be covered as part of those proposed terms. I think we assumed that there were going to be items covered within those proposed terms that they presented to us, and they assumed that those items wouldn't be covered. And so now there's items that we've outlined within the lease that are needs of municipal court and typical policy and procedures that we do as leases that -- apparently they don't think were covered during that agreement, where we thought they were. >> Garza: So what's the -- I'm assuming this happens. >> I'm sorry? [3:27:45 PM] >> Garza: I'm assuming something like this happens with other kinds of simileses. What is the process to move -- similar leases. What is the process to move forward? >> Typically we're able to iron out these deals on a pretty good time frame. To where -- you know, here's what our processes are. Typically, here's what our not to exceed amount was that council approved, and so we aren't -- we've never really had to come back to council to ask for more money. And so, I mean, that's -- that would be an option, is to come back before council if there is really a bottom-line number we can arrive to that we understand is the difference that we need. Or having the landlord and us cut back items that we think we need or cover items that we need to have done and the landlord also makes some cutbacks as well as part of the negotiations. >> Flannigan: I think we'll discuss more of that in executive session. >> Garza: Okay. >> Flannigan: Yeah. >> Garza: I guess I would just -- I would hope there's some kind of a deadline on this, on the back and forth. I understand we're going to go into details in executive session, but, you know, much of the expediency of this was to have our city staff relocated and it almost seems like this has delayed the process significantly. I guess there will be more details in executive session. >> I understand. >> Casar: Do you have a time line yet on the rfp for this other location? >> We don't. Our hope is once we can finalize this -- the south location, then we can start focusing some time on the north location. You know, hoping to have move in of muni court in June 2019. And so, you know, that would give us a little bit of time within 2019 to start working on that but have that shortly on the street once some of our workload frees up to start working on that rfp. [3:29:45 PM] >> Casar: And so are you saying >> Casar: Are you saying it's contingent on move-in or after the lease is finalized? >> Not necessarily contingent on each other but freeing up staff time to work on it. Once move-in happens, now we can devote time to -- >> Casar: Real estate workloads has more to do with finalizing the lease. I imagine you are involved -- >> Not a whole lot on the move-in side, but we do play roles in that. >> The north location is a higher priority than the downtown court because their facility is continuing to deteriorate in a very expensive lease situation. It might make more sense to complete the move to the met center, get the downtown court situated and there's a sequencing section that might be a good conversation among council. The last item is discussion of future items. I don't know if either of you have anything to add for the future. We can also figure that out for future agenda. Without objection, the committee will go into closed session to take up one item, pursuant to section 551 portion 071, the committee will discuss real estate matters related to the municipal court and the goals set by council in resolution 2018-0215-048. [4:03:15 PM] Flannigan: We are out of closed session. In closed session we discussed real estate matters related to item: JC005. The meeting of the Judicial Committee is now closed.