20 Programs Earn Best Practices Award from TAC Leadership Foundation

After careful deliberation, the TAC Leadership Foundation committee that selects County Best Practices Award winners chose to honor 20 programs.

The programs include a regional capital public defender’s office, a hands-on money management class geared toward helping noncustodial parents pay their child support and a courthouse renovation, among others.

The goal of the County Best Practices Awards Program is to promote innovations, achievements and increased quality of services in county government. Winning programs must go above and beyond standard practices, among other base criteria.

The winning programs streamline business procedures, create new solutions to a problem, increase productivity or customer service, result in policy and legislative changes that support county government, and foster community partnerships.

Determining whether a program meets the criteria isn’t always cut and dry.

Members of the Leadership Foundation County Best Practices Selection Committee discussed the merits of each nominated program carefully, relying on members’ knowledge and outside input. The committee’s expertise is wide-reaching — members include a county judge, a tax assessor-collector, a clerk and an auditor, among others. If a nominated program didn’t fit into members’ expertise, the committee consulted with knowledgeable TAC staff and county personnel.

Press releases have already been sent to the local media outlets of the winning counties, and each program will be highlighted via a video presentation at TAC’s Annual Conference, from Aug. 24-26 in Austin. In addition, the winning programs will be featured in the September/October edition of County, and resources will be available online at the County Best Practices section of the Leadership Foundation’s Web site at www.county.org/cms/leader.

Counties and programs earning Innovation awards are:

• Bexar County, for its foreclosure map Web site, which uses GIS technology to show potential buyers the location of foreclosed properties. Committee members called the Web site’s services “unique” and “significant.”
  
  
• Cameron County, for its Street Light Project, in which the county created a fee for services necessary in subdivisions located outside city limits. Residents were concerned about night time safety, and the fee allowed the county to install street lights to increase public safety.
  
  
• Collin County, for its Sheriff’s Office Temporary Pool, which helped the office overcome a difficult staffing situation by creating an available pool of qualified and trained on-call employees. Committee members called the program “fabulous.” “It’s a good way to find good people,” said one member.
  
  
• Collin County, for utilizing an internal case management system and employee clinic to reduce workers’ compensation expenses.
  
  
• Fort Bend’s team-model structure approach to Information Technology project management. The committee felt following a similar project management structure may help other counties be more successful in their efforts to implement new software programs in multiple county departments.
  
  
• Lubbock County and the entire Panhandle and West Texas Region, for working together to create a regional capital public defender’s office. The office can save a county hundreds of thousands of dollars in defense costs, while ensuring that those prosecuted for capital murder receive an experienced and dedicated defense attorney.
  
  
• Montgomery and Harris counties, for their collaborative effort in their Spring Creek Greenway Wetlands Mitigation Program, which helped create more than 350 acres of nature preserves via nontraditional funding.
  
  
• Travis County, for its E-issuance program, and for choosing to email expunction and non-disclosure filings. By ordering electronic civil process filings, the county was able to save time and money, and track paperwork more easily.

Counties and programs earning Achievement awards are:

• Hidalgo County, for its effort in working with state and federal decision makers to renovate its levee system as part of the federal border fence project. “It was not an easy thing to do,” the committee said. “The (border fence) was horribly controversial for the residents, but (county officials) turned it around.”
  
  
• Lubbock County, for its CourTools Accountability Program, which allows the public to judge the judges. The program is modeled after recommendations by the National Center for State Courts, and while many counties have implemented parts of the NCSC recommendations, committee members did not know of any other county implementing the whole program.
  
  
• Travis County, for its Parks Capital Improvement Program. The program “went beyond parks planning to ‘green printing’” the committee said, and was the second-largest bond issuance in the nation.
  
  
• Williamson County, for its Brushy Creek Regional Trail, a collaborative project that involved 6.75 miles of trails, six parks, and links between residential communities and businesses. A committee member who had visited the trail called the project “visionary.”

Counties and programs earning Delivery of Services awards are:

• Carson County, for its City/County EMS Cooperation Program, which helped ensure that the county’s rural residents would have access to ambulance services and qualified EMS personnel.
  
  
• Dewitt County, for its citizen commitment program, in which the county enlisted volunteers to paint the courthouse’s ceiling during its renovation, saving the county $48,000. Committee members said they “loved” the project because it created pride among residents.
  
  
• Hidalgo County, for its Deaf Link program, which uses local TV stations to provide the county’s 140,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals with emergency alerts in American Sign Language. Though the county enlisted the help of a vendor, the project earned a Best Practices designation because county officials there spearheaded a national precedent and worked collaboratively with the private sector and other government agencies.
  
  
• Jim Wells County, for its workshops on prescribed burns. The curriculum developed by the county was utilized by the Texas Department of Agriculture and sent around the state.
  
  
• Lubbock County, for being selected as the first county to pioneer regional voting centers and successfully communicating the concept to voters.
• Tarrant County, for its educational money-management program, which is geared toward non-custodial parents. The program’s goal is to help parent pay child support on time.
  
  
• Tarrant County, for its pre-trial in-court mediation program. Committee members said the county was going above and beyond by offering mediation services at the Justice of the Peace court level.
  
  
• Travis County, for its efforts in educating struggling taxpayers about payment options. “They are being so proactive,” the committee said during the selection process. “They did a really good job at using the media, and realizing that the media needed help and was not doing a good job on its own. They made the payment process simple for taxpayers. They retrained their staff to make it positive and not negative. ... They did a good job of telling people, ‘pay what you can.’”

Texas County Initiatives Earn National Recognition

Several programs honored by TAC’s Leadership Foundation are now receiving recognition beyond the state of Texas, as they have also received distinction from the National Association of Counties’ 2009 Achievement Awards Program.

Most notably, the West Texas Regional Public Defender for Capital Cases office earned the designation of being the “Best of Category” winner in the Criminal Justice and Public Safety category of the NACo awards program.

Only one program is named “best of” for each category each year; the designation is meant to “highlight the most outstanding county model programs submitted to the awards competition,” according to NACo. NACo also honored Collin County for its emergency communication fiber project and its indigent health care services program, both of which TAC recognized with Best Practices awards last year. Videos about those programs are available on the Leadership Foundation’s County Best Practices Web site at www.county.org/ cms/leader.

Collin County also received a national Achievement Award for the temporary worker pool that helps staff its sheriff’s office, which the Leadership Foundation will also honor this year, and for its court collection unit and 50-mile-per-year asphalt program.

In addition, Ellis County earned an Achievement Award for its indigent health care partnership program, Galveston County for its emergency management and response efforts, and Lubbock County for its CourTools court accountability program. Information about the CourTools program will be presented at TAC’s Annual Conference during its general assembly.

County Employees Walk Their Way Toward Wellness
Starr County Jailer Who Lost 187 Pounds Offers Advice

In February 2008, Starr County Jail Officer Sgt. Ruben Martinez’s life hit bottom. His wife had asked for a divorce. He was depressed, struggling with diabetes and weighed more than 400 pounds. His doctor told him that he was not going to live much longer given his health and the death of his father at a young age. And he worried that his weight would prohibit him from helping his fellow officers in an emergency.

That’s when Sgt. Martinez said that he came to his senses, went to church and prayed for help. Martinez made a promise to God that he would lose his excess weight by the following year. It’s been a promise that he’s now close to keeping. As of mid-June, Martinez had lost 187 pounds in just a year and a half. He had 45 more pounds to go until August 2009, when he hopes to reach his target weight of 190.

In losing the weight, Martinez has not relied on surgery, special foods or medication. Instead, he took to the streets. The first day, Martinez couldn’t walk more than half a football field before he became winded. By the end of the first week, it was 100 yards. In two months, it was three miles, and now he walks five miles a day as part of a regular exercise program.

“I never thought that I could lose as much weight in so little time,” Martinez said. “For me, it is a dream that came true. I look at it as a miracle from God.”

Martinez’s walking regime is similar to the wellness challenge offered to T AC’s Health and Employee Benefits Pool (HEBP) members via the Pool’s new Healthy County benefits package. County employees across the state participated in the 10-week walking challenge, called PATH (Planned Action Toward Health). The program is designed to encourage employees to develop healthy habits — such as walking — that can become part of a person’s daily routine. The program converts various types of exercises and activities into steps or miles, and asks challengers to complete a “journey” across a map until they reach their destination.

More than 2,500 county employees participated in the walking challenge this year. While not every participant continued to log their progress throughout the duration of the challenge, county employees still logged a total of 945,696,108 steps — or 447,773 total miles. The Top 10 Healthy County PATH Challengers together logged more than 52.5 million steps during the 10 weeks. They are:

• Gloria Bird, of Hood County, who earned 12,148,421 steps for a total of 5,752 miles and 473,487 calories burned;
  
  
• Nancy Fuentes-Melgarejo, of Yoakum County, who earned 6,864,298 steps for a total of 3,250 miles and 267,708 calories burned;
  
  
• Sandra Duckworth, of Newton County, who earned 5,955,105 steps for a total of 2,820 miles and 232,249 calories burned;
  
  
• Virginia Driskell, of Houston County, who earned 4,868,793 steps for a total of 2,305 miles and 182,241 calories burned;
  
  
• Elida Alvarez, of Cochran County, who earned 4,590,608 steps for a total of 2,174 miles and 179,034 calories burned;
  
  
• Diana Oakman, of Polk County, who earned 4,383,304 steps for a total of 2,075 miles and 170,949 calories burned;
  
  
• Jennifer Stancik, of Colorado County, who earned 4,220,384 steps for a total of 1,998 miles and 138,236 calories burned;
  
  
• Cynthia Lum, of Houston County, who earned 4,031,805 steps for a total of 1,909 miles and 155,928 calories burned;
  
  
• Lisa Raines, of Yoakum County, who earned 3,952,888 steps for a total of 1,872 miles and 154,163 calories burned; and
  
  
• Linda Crump, of Donley County, who earned 3,936,251 steps for a total of 1,864 miles and 150,633 calories burned.

The PATH Wellness challenge also encouraged participants to improve their lives in other ways, such as setting goals, hand washing, meditation, volunteering, stress management, watching caloric intake and relationship building. In an end-of-challenge survey, half the challengers said their wellness regimes had helped them improve their focus on goal setting; 19 percent said they now spend more time meditating, nearly 16 percent said they spend more time volunteering and 27 percent said they felt like their relationships with others had improved. More than 30 percent said they had also focused on watching their calories more.

Nearly 40 percent of challengers reported that they had lost weight, lowered their stress and increased their fitness.

More than 60 percent said they felt healthier overall, and more than 45 percent said had more energy than they had at the beginning of the challenge.

While Martinez lost weight through walking, he also improved his life in other ways. First and foremost, he made major changes to his diet. Gone were the 10 to 18 sodas he drank each day. He eliminated the numerous candy bars and sugary pastries. “Before I was eating 24-7,” he said, “six or seven meals a day and all the other junk.”

Martinez reduced his intake to one meal a day, with only food he could fit onto a small plate. He also replaced sodas with sugar-free green tea. He has since added a breakfast taco each morning, but sticks to this regular diet. “I eat regular food, just a lot less,” he explained. “I’m very careful with my intake.”

Martinez described the beginning of his journey as going to hell and back, as his body detoxed from the massive amount of sugars in his system. But after those first few months, he found new happiness with each pound he lost.

“For starters, I am now 11 months diabetic free. No more medication. I feel better physically. Every day I walk five miles and love it,” Martinez said as he listed the benefits of his new healthy lifestyle. “I can do things I couldn’t do before. I love working in my yard. Mentally I can think better, where before, I wanted to be asleep. My heart works better. Now I know I can do better. My future looks totally different. Even Richard Simmons sent me a postcard.”

He is willing to offer inspiration and advice for anyone starting out on their own paths toward wellness, and he is supporting his colleagues in Starr County as they shed pounds themselves.

“The most important thing to do to lose weight is to love yourself,” he said. “If you’re doing it for someone else, you’re not going to be able to do it. Y ou’ve got to do it for yourself.”

Another piece of advice: Don’t quit.

“Keep going. If I can do it, anyone can,” he said.

Health Pool Hands out $9 Million in Renewal Credits

County officials on the board of the TAC Health and Employee Benefits Pool (TAC HEBP) agreed for the third year in a row to issue credits to renewing members.

The Pool usually returns renewal credits to members when losses are lower than projected. While the gain on operations was not at the level desired this year, the board supported issuing the $9 million in renewal credits due to the economy and its impact on members.

“The Pool experienced a net gain on underwriting this year. But, like many of us have experienced with our personal accounts, the value of the reserves we are holding has gone down due to the turmoil in the markets,” said Jennifer Hall, the Pool’s deputy director of program administration. “The Pool holds most of the assets to maturity, so we don’t expect to realize these losses. Recognizing the difficulty many members face with their budgets this year, the Board agreed to return the gain on underwriting to the members.”

In 2007, the TAC HEBP Board agreed to issue credits totaling $6 million to counties that renewed their medical coverage. In June 2008, the board increased the credits to $9 million. This year, the board agreed to keep the renewal credits at $9 million, bringing the total renewal credits for the past three years to $24 million.

In addition, the board bucked the national trend in health insurance costs by establishing rates that are up only 6.1 percent on average, significantly lower than the 9 percent average the rest of the state and country are seeing.

The amount of the credit for each group depends on how long it has carried health coverage with TAC HEBP and how much it has contributed to the surplus. Each group’s rates are different, based on the type of plan it offers, the demographics of the group and the group’s size.

The board opted to issue monthly credits rather than reduce overall rates because of the need for rates to reflect anticipated claims for the year.

“We would love to give no increase at all. However, the rates need to at least keep up with medical inflation, or we would be setting the members up for a huge rate increase down the road,” said TAC HEBP Program Manager Bill Norwood. “We try to keep the rates as steady as possible, without wide fluctuations that make it difficult to budget.”

The credits will be issued on each monthly invoice beginning with the group’s anniversary date. Groups must have been a member for at least one full year to qualify.

New Association Presidents Sworn In

Several TAC affiliate organizations have selected new presidents in recent months to lead their association for the next year. Incoming leaders include:

• County and District Clerks Association of texas: Victoria County District Clerk Cathy Stuart;
  
  
• Justices of the Peace & Constables Association: Hidalgo County Constable Larry Gallardo;
  
  
• West Texas County Judges & Commissioners Association: tom Green County Judge Michael Brown;
  
  
• South Texas County Judges & Commissioners Association: Calhoun County Commissioner Roger C. Galvan; and
  
  
• North & East texas County Judges & Commissioners Association: Bell County Judge Jon Burrows.

Also, at the Texas Association of Tax Assessor-Collectors Annual Conference in June, Cass County Tax Assessor-Collector Becky Watson was sworn into leadership a second time. It was the first time the association’s presiding office has been held by the same person for two terms. Watson originally assumed the office after past president Sherman Krause resigned to enter the private sector in October 2008.

TAC Suggestion Box
How Can TAC Improve Our Educational Conferences?

TAC is an association led by county officials, for county government, and our staff strives to create programs and services that are custom-tailored to fit county needs as they arise. To do that, TAC is working hard to obtain suggestions and comments directly from all county officials. No one knows better than you — our members — what services we should address as we plan for the future. And so we started this “TAC Suggestion Box” as a way to begin a dialogue about how to improve TAC services and as an avenue for our members to use to propose new ideas that will help improve Texas county government.

So we want to know: Is there a topic you would like to see presented at our educational conferences? Is there a speaker or expert you’re familiar with that you believe other county officials would benefit hearing from? Are TAC’s locations for regional conferences convenient?

Officials who have suggestions related to TAC’s educational programs or another TAC service can send an email to Executive Director Karen Ann Norris at executivedirector@county.org, or send an old-fashioned letter to Executive Director, P.O. Box 2131, Austin, TX 78768

TAC Gets New Risk Management Board Chair

The announcement by Cooke County Judge Bill Freeman that he was retiring effective May 29 led the county officials on the TAC Risk Management Pool Board of Directors to promote its vice-chair, Erath County Judge Tab Thompson, to the top post at the Board’s May meeting. Denton County Clerk Cynthia Mitchell was elected vice-chair.

In his 31 years with Cooke County, Freeman served as county judge, justice of the peace and deputy sheriff.

Also, leading the TAC Health and Employment Benefits Pool Board now are Colorado County Auditor Raymie Kana, with Polk County John Thompson as vice-chair, respectively. Lubbock County Commissioner Patti Jones chairs the TAC Unemployment Compensation Fund, whose vice chair is Midland County Constable Charles Harris.

County, TAC Earn National Communications Awards

The National Association of County Information officers, a communications-centric affiliate of the national Association of Counties, recently honored TAC and County magazine with nine 2009 Awards of Excellence designations, including the first-place “Superior” designation for feature writing. The most entries any county or association may submit for consideration in the contest is 10.

NACIO’s communications awards are divided into categories and subcategories, with one grand prize “Best of Class” award given in each major category (including Annual Reports, Internal Publications, External Publications, Writing, Graphic Design, and Computer Media, and others). Subcategory designations — first-place “Superior,” second-place “Excellence” and third place “Meritorious” — are awarded competitively, based on quality and overall achievement.

County Managing Editor Maria Sprow earned the first-place Superior feature writing award for “Inside the Media Bubble” (Jan/Feb 2008), about the role public information officers play in promoting county services. Sprow also tied herself to receive two Excellence feature writing awards, one for “How Much Does a White Lie Cost” (Jan/Feb 2008), about whether it’s cost-effective to screen for indigency before giving defendants a court-appointed attorney, and the other for “Now Hiring Ex-off enders” (Nov/Dec 2008), about Travis County’s decision to move the criminal history box from job applications to give ex-off enders a fair chance at employment. And she received a Meritorious award for “Courthouse tales” (May/June 2008), about courthouse restoration project challenges.

Henrico and Chesterfield counties in Virginia, Broward County in Florida, St. Charles Parish in Louisiana and the Kentucky Association of Counties were also honored by NACIO with feature writing awards. The Association also honored Hidalgo County and its public information officer, Cari Lambrecht, with a Meritorious award for its comprehensive Web site, www.co.hidalgo.tx.us.

Internally, TAC’s communications staff earned awards for several projects, including a Superior award for its 2007 Annual Member Report and an Excellence award for its internal branding and style guide campaign, which was developed to ensure all communications from TAC departments are consistent with TAC’s overall mission. Art Director Deann Giua and Graphic Designer David Garcia both earned Superior awards for their creative work throughout the year. The award-winning designs include a jersey worn by TAC’s wellness and cycling club members, and the logo for the new TAC Health and Employee Benefits Pool member program Healthy County, among others.

Since 1993, TAC’s communications staff has been honored 74 times via the NACIO annual awards competition. The department is dedicated to quality and professionalism, and is often contacted to help affiliate county associations with their publications, marketing and communications tools.

^ Back to top