Travis County Commissioners Court
September 6, 2005
Item 40
40. Consider and take appropriate action to inform the u.s. Department of housing and urban development of Travis County's interest in participating in the community development block grant program as an urban county. To start this off, I was contacted by h.u.d. In san antonio and they asked me for the -- whether Travis County was interested in being an urban county participant. And my first response was if that meant sending money to the federal government, no. But if it meant we would be on the receiving end, yes. And what they meant was that we could be on the receiving end. Mr. Davis and mr. -- mr. Smith have been working with this and ms. Flemming. They will give us a very, very brief overview.
>> dan smith office of county judge. In your backup, there should be a letter -- from h.u.d. Dated June 9th. Informing us that we may -- we may qualify to be part of the cdbg program. Then on -- on approximately I think the 20th -- 20th of -- of August, we will receive a phone call from john maldando, indicating that we do qualify. We qualify to become a cdbg participant for this fiscal year. We are eligible to receive $1.2 million. And that money would land September '06. There's a couple of things which we have to do in order to -- to receive the funds. We would have to get a letter approved by the Commissioners court saying that we are interested in receiving the money. We would also need a letter from the county attorney that needs to indicate that we had the legal authority to undertake essential community development and housing assistance activities in an unincorporated area. Then we would have to come up with our one-year annual plan on how we would spend the money and a five-year consolidated plan. Harvey and sherri and I met with county staff last -- last -- I’m sorry, Thursday before last. We had -- we had -- we had done some original research by looking at other annual plans of other cities and counties that are cdbg participants. So we are reviewing that. We have a now questions that we need to ask h.u.d. On how we need to proceed. They have indicated to me that -- that they would do whatever they could to assist us in going through this process since we are brand new. The other thing about concerns is that 20% of the allocation can be used for administrative costs. Anything else?
>> the gentleman from h.u.d. Did tell me that Williamson county has been receiving for a few years more than a million dollars.
>> correct.
>> so it's a -- it's a good opportunity and apparently once you get there, as long as you spend the more than properly, it's easy to stay in there.
>> uh-huh.
>> that's the -- the 1.2 million is the minimum amount at this time. Every year it normally goes up.
>> yeah.
>> if you all remember, the $150,000 that we are getting from Williamson county for the north ridge project is part of that cdbg allocation.
>> I really want to thank you for -- for your vision of having this drawn down [indiscernible] cdbg funds, you know. City of Austin has been doing this for a long, long, long, long time. Of course now with the county being able to deal with -- with -- with an urban county, as Travis County being able to deal this with this, I just think that it's another way of dealing with some very legitimate concerns that we have in an unincorporated area. So I would like to applaud the -- you and your staff for bringing this before the Commissioners court and for us to move forward. If you make a motion on that, as soon as staff was making that presentation, I would love to second it.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> my vision was in answering a phone call and finding out we would be on the receiving end. These are the ones who were -- have been working on it and will continue to do the hard work, right? But the h.u.d. Representative did indicate that they would give us as much assistance as we need and this first year I’m not sure how much we will need, but it's good to know that they are available.
>> judge, just a technical question. Because we are all fixing to start markup tomorrow. I think that we can go ka-ching this might be helpful that we will have an additional pot of money, although it has to be outside the city of Austin city limit, there's still plenty of needs out there. They certainly don't want us to swap out, kind of pull a state of Texas thing, we will just swap the lottery money for the general stuff. They want it to be above and beyond. So my question is can we have some thought between now and tomorrow about how we might have some good strategies going into budget markup about some things that I think we all near and dear to our hearts want to do in the health and human services area and things that are very consistent with what you got here to kind of leverage our dollars and if there are things that we want to go above and beyond, that we might be able to figure out a -- a reserve or some kind of strategy going into tomorrow at -- through Friday on how best to do this.
>> well, did you say that it was '06?
>> yeah, but that's still in our fiscal year.
>> September of '06.
>> knows that it's based on the congressional budget. And when the -- when the federal budget process is sort of unpredictable, really. I mean, I don't know what can we get in writing --
>> right, susan could --
>> basically to ensure delivery of payment by September 30th of next year?
>> right. That's the -- that's the challenge. So what I would -- my thinking was this first year, let's get through it, get the money, then we will have a much better idea of when it gets here.
>> so kind of a lag year kind of thing. That's the safest way, yep.
>> just because it really depends on the congressional budget process. And the other thing -- the amount could be larger than this. But there's a lot of work involved first and -- and we were speaking with the regional representative and I’m sure that he knows the powers that be in washington d.c. But at the same time there are a few other challenges that this has to go through. So -- so the safest bet I think is -- let's wait will until we receive that first payment.
>> we will know exactly what it is for next year in terms of doing it.
>> yes. I got gleeful when I saw just the possibility of getting that in the foreseeable future. When I heard that date, though, on one end I was real happy, on the other hand caution prevailed.
>> okay. [multiple voices]
>> thank you for everything that you have done on this endeavor.
>> [indiscernible]
>> we would have to be working over this next fiscal year on the community plan of the -- of the long-term. There's an annual plan and then there's like a three to five-year plan and so staff has -- has been figuring out how we can get that accomplished and even if we do some of that work during this fiscal year, it's possible that we can be reimbursed based on what we have heard thus far. That we can be reimbursed for whatever time and work we spend on that, even before we receive the official grant.
>> that will make us think through some stuff that we may not do otherwise. And then it really impacts a whole lot of people and I know there are some requirements -- there is some requirement that there be community input.
>> yes. Also notice to the jurisdictions in the unincorporated areas that we will be receiving these funds and potentially setting aside a portion they can apply for grants. That's something that's part of the planning process.
>> when you call washington, make sure that they do know that there are a few republicans here. I mean, that might just kind of push you every the edge, make sure that we can get that money. [laughter]
>> I don't know.
>> well, I don't get to tell them that very often, so tell them that. [laughter] huh, john?
>> well, mr. Maldanado has been very --
>> helpful.
>> helpful. And he calls on -- on a regular basis on, okay, you guys have the money in terms of the good planning, for the social service contracts, those are not willy nilly, we throw things at problems, there are defined areas according to a community assessment and we apply our dollars as we hope we leverage it the best. So I’m hopeful the same kind of process can occur because we may want to talk about certain kind of targeted areas because the list that dan gave us here is just a wonderful shopping list of areas and to get really creative about the kinds of things that might go into those dollars. So thank you, dan, for all of your work.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
>> thank you and he will very much. Thank you for your hard work.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, September 7, 2005 10:24 AM