Travis County Commissioners Court
November 18, 2008
Item 30
Number 30 -- by the way that was approval of a, b, c. 30. Consider and take appropriate action on items related to the program year 2007 consolidated annual performance evaluation report for the community development block grant (cdbg) provided by the u.s. Department of housing and urban development (hud): a. Summary of the annual performance report; b. Notification of the extension of the comment period until December 12, 2008; c. Draft of the program year 2007 consolidated annual performance evaluation report for public comment; and d. Other related issues.
>> good afternoon.
>> christie moffett, Travis County health and human services. We are working on getting a powerpoint up. But we will continue our conversation so as not to delay. Every year we are required to turn in an annual report 90 days after our program year. Our program year runs from October 1st through September 30th. So our annual report, which we refer to as the caper, is due on December 30th. It requires a public comment period as well as the public hearing. What we're going to do today is provide you an overview of what how we did over the past 12 months with cdbg and hopefully have the powerpoint up soon. It's up. Looking at the first slide, it provides you a project update as of September 30th, 2008. So currently we have six projects that have been funded with cdbg money. The first is land acquisition for production of new owner housing units. We have budgeted $445,518. We haven't expended any funds with that project to date, we are expect being the property to be acquired in early 2009. For the street improvements project in apache shores, we have budgeted approximately $800,000, actually $805,000 through the first two program years. Of which $40,881 has been expended. And what that let's you know is that we have started the design, engineering and environmental phase for that project. For the expansion of health and human services, social work service goes we have budgeted $64,000 and $31,697 has been expended and 71 people have benefited from that project. The road improvement design for lava lane, which the court allocated reprogramed dollars from the '06 year into the '07 we have actually just reallocated that money and have started the exemption process. We have an rfq that is in draft form and are just waiting for those budget adjustments to occur. Water improvement project in north ridge acre budgeted $200,000, expended $170,791 of the cdbg funds for Travis County thus far. We anticipate completion of the project within the first quarter of program year 2008. Then finally, our water and wastewater planning project, budgeted $88,727. We have expended $48,475. We have started site visits for that project as well as identified -- started to preliminary identify some criteria with which we could look at each neighborhood in a very similar way, regardless of where they are located within the county. We will be providing that criteria to the court for approval in the next couple of months. Now, I will make a note on that slide it does say that those dollars are expended in hte. Hte is the county's financial system. So when you look at the next slide for timeliness, you will see a couple of differences here. So we have to provide a financial summary report to h.u.d. That basically looks at how quickly we're spending our money. We have talked about timeliness in the past. You know that we received a four month delay due to an erroneous allocation amount provided by h.u.d. Instead of starting in October of 2006 we actually started in January of 2007. So that actually reduced our ability to spend money by four months. Traditionally h.u.d. Looks at timeliness 22 months into a new entitlements process. So with us we only had 18 months. And our goal is to try to be no more than 1.5 times our amount of our current allocation. So 1.5 is the number that we're looking for. So you will see in the first column it says idis. Based on our closeout procedures and all of that, everything that we have drawed down as of September 30th, we were at a timeliness ratio of 1.81. Based on looking at hte and everything that was put to the budget -- to the grant as of September 30th, we actually are at a ratio of 1.64. Which -- which once we go ahead and draw down additional dollars in October, and do our final draw downs for November, we believe that we will be very close to our 1.5
>> [indiscernible] ratio which November 30 would actually be our 22 month goal. So we have actually done fairly well if we look at it in those terms. Timeliness ratio.
>> in what terms will h.u.d. Look at it?
>> [laughter]
>> well, I think for us they still have a -- our field office has an opinion that we need to be at the 1.5. However, we also have the opportunity to talk with washington and see how they feel about it as well. They seem to be more open.
>> that would be a very -- a very -- that would be a way of saying that we have a different opinion.
>> right
>> [laughter]
>> the next slide, the county provides general fund dollars for the administration of cdbg. And so we thought it would be appropriate to share with you how we're doing on those goals, which we call pb3 goals. So -- so our goals are to stay within our ratio, two out of the four quarters obviously this time we were 0 out of the four quarters. We were not within our timeliness ratio. Also at no time during the year were we more than two times our allocation amount. No monitoring visits occurred during the fiscal year so we are not able to let you know. If we had no findings, we had no returned money. We did develop our annual action plan successfully and turned it in on time. We provided three neighborhoods technical assistance and we did not primary survey any neighborhoods this past year, but we expect to do more of that this coming year. We also met our h.u.d. Deadlines for reports 89% of the time. Doing that eight out of nine reports were tendered on time, the one that wasn't turned in on time it was only by one day. And then finally we met all of our dead lines for planning reports related to the action plan, the caper and any amendments to the consolidated plan 100% of the time. In addition to the work that the cdbg staff does to implement projects, there are other additional requirements that h.u.d. Has. So why we won't go into all of those as they are detailed in the report, we thought that we would highlight a few. The first is that we are involved with the national association for county community and economic development. The organization called nacced. Naco, the national association of counties, there we do adequacy and planning work around national issues regarding cdbg, h.u.d. Funds and other home funding. In terms of planning we have been involved in a few efforts around affordability of housing. There isn't anything really structured Austin housing is a cross cutting issue around many areas. So we have been involved with housing works, affordability forums with the city of Austin's neighborhood housing community development. We have also joined echo, the cdbg office has. As a part of health and human services to become engaged in homelessness and also to inform any areas of homelessness that we find in the unincorporated areas. We also participate on the resource development work group within the hhs department. And that helps us look for opportunities for additional funding sources and also to make sure that -- that we are staying on track with the direction of the department. Then finally, we also work with the contract workers, which is an internal department. That looks at the social service contract investments with the general fund. We also monitoring one of the contracts that is in direct relation to an interest of the cdbg office. And finally we attend numerous conferences and trainings to make sure that we are up to date on all regulations and procedures. So the -- the report also requires that we come up with some performance improvements for the next year. And so we're -- we're recommending increasing efficiencies by continuing to seek training and technical assistance through h.u.d. And other entities creating a cdbg policy and procedure manual and also to increase the timely spending of funds, continuing with our implementation schedule of current projects and recommending funding of py 09 projects that be implemented in 12 to 18 months. So once the court approves the draft, it will be up for public comment beginning hopefully tomorrow. And that -- that public comment period will go through December 12th. Written comments can be provided to me at my e-mail we will also a public hearing at 9:00 a.m. On December 2nd. All comments will be reviewed and considered in the final preparation of the report. So -- so --
>> backup that we were provided today should simply be added to the backup that we received before today.
>> that is correct. The backup that was provided today is in relation to the report that comes from the data management system that h.u.d. Requires us to use.
>> okay. These together make up one report?
>> that is correct. Yes.
>> okay. Questions? Move approval of the summary annual report.
>> second.
>> we can move approval of the -- of the -- making this draft available for public comment.
>> correct.
>> beginning tomorrow.
>> yes.
>> and what do we need to do on b?
>> on b we just needed to notify you that we missed a couple of deadlines with advertising. And so -- so to make up the time for that we consulted with the county attorney's office. So we just extended the public comment period for an extra week. So it will continue through December 12th rather than December 5th.
>> county attorney said that was okay?
>> yes.
>> b is part of the motion.
>> second.
>> seconded by Commissioner Gomez. Discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> thank you all for a job well done. Don't you all fall in love with the afternoon presentation. It will be in the morning from now on.
>> okay, thank you very much
>> [laughter]
>> thank you.
>>
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 1:38 PM