Travis County Commissioners Court
March 14, 2006
Item 13
Number 13? Consider and take appropriate action on the Travis County low income repair and replacement assistance program including the following: a is an update, b policy regarding payments to participating emission repair facilities for customers that reside outside of Travis County at the time of inspection and 13 (c) is request for grant funded employee and health and human services department to assist with implementation of Travis County's air check Texas repair and replacement assistance program call center. Further grant agreement with Texas commission on environmental quality.
>> (one moment, please, for change in captioners...)
>> we have actually issued 277 vouchers to repair vehicles and nine replacement vouchers. Of those vouchers, to date 180 have been used, so we have made 180 repairs and we've replaced five cars over the last six months. Just to put that into perspective a little bit, since -- during those same two quarters, in Travis County 20,278 cars have failed the emissions inspection, so we haven't repaired one percent of those vehicles. To put that in a little bit of perspective, for the first two years in the programs up in the dallas region, dallas, collin county, they were repairing about .95, .85, 1.21 percent in tarrant county. In dallas county the first two years they repaired a little over half a percent. And then those five together came in at less than five percent of the repairs. That is what you can expect when you get these programs up and running in the first few years it's hard to get the folks in and get involved in our process, but we are trying. So we are on track we feel. To date we've spent $84,810 out of the $100,000 that tceq gave us to begin the program with. Those funds as you recall come from the 2-dollar fee that everybody pays when they get their car inspected, whether or not it passes or fails, we all pay two dollars, that is what funds this program. The state collect those funds and then regrants them to us and they are considered grant funds. It's 100% grant. We don't have to provide any match. That's the update. If there are any questions about that part or if you want to wait and ask them later, I’ll move on.
>> let me ask you, you get, you pay two dollars payment that you make to the stations supposedly is the two dollars that we're supposed to get back to take care of our program, correct? And they allotted $100,000 to do that.
>> on September first, because no funds had been collected, because the program started on September first, they had collected no fees, tceq gave us $100,000 from frankly their other lirrat programs in the state and they were able to do that. So now when we turn in this next report, we're close enough to where they will continuously give us money as we go through it. They're not just going to give us lump sums as it comes in, if that makes sense.
>> but 100,000 won't be the limit that we get?
>> no, sir.
>> because we know that there are half a million cars in our region, so effectively you're talking about a million bucks that's going to go to the teak?
>> right. In appropriations language, that had to be appropriated to tceq, but the language in this last legislative session said all the monies that are collected in the new counties, which are travis and Williamson counties, will go back to tceq and they can take out whatever funds they need to administer the program because they are partnering in it and then return the rest to us.
>> so in other words, they've got a pretty big slush fund potentially on their hands.
>> it is a reimbursement program, so they will only give us fubdz as we spend them.
>> I think we're familiar with how the state does that and you collect all of these huge amounts of money and you don't get them all back into one area, that's an interesting question to ask tceq.
>> you should know that they are -- this is an interim charge of the environmental affairs committee I believe in the house. So they will be looking at this issue, so the county should definitely be involved in that process when it comes up later this year.
>> so on the emission repair facilities, for the second quarter we added seven?
>> yes, sir, and we've added more since then. We've got at least five more, so we're over 50 emission repair facilities in travis and Williamson county that have contracted with Travis County to participate in our program. And just to put that in perspective, the last numbers I got from dallas and houston showed that -- in collin county, which is one of the counties up in the dallas area that actually has a similar population to us, they had 25 recognized emission repair facilities participating in their program. So we've had great response from damage and repair facilities. The paperwork has been an issue, but nobody has dropped out of the program to date. We have been working with them, corey manchaca, who most of you have met, has been working very hard to help those facilities get through our paperwork process, which is different for them so that's been a learning curve for all of us, but they've gotten through it and it's been great. Okay. The issue that we just want to bring to your attention today, as you recall, the repair program helps vehicle owners repair their cars. And really the recipients of these funds are cars. We're trying to reduce emissions from cars. A state statute, however, in order to qualify for the program, the vehicle must have failed an emissions test within the past month and it must have been registered in Travis County it says in the program county for at least 12 months. We looked up the law on registration and it turns out that you can live in Travis County, get your car registered here, a month later move to another county that you have a registration that's good for 12 months. You are not required by txdot regulation to reregister your car upon moving to that new county. You are required to reregister it where you live once the registration sticker expires. So there are instances, we've had five of them so far, maybe seven, but we worked it out on five, where we have assisted people who live outside of Travis County, but whose cars are registered in Travis County. The reason we've done this is because if we told them -- and all of these people live in Williamson county now, so they live in Round Rock, Leander, they live in the Austin, but in Williamson county. If we said no, no, you've got to get your car registered in Williamson county and participate in their program, then their car wouldn't have been registered for 12 months in Williamson county. So they would have failed the emissions inspection and neither one of our programs would be able to help them. So implicitly in conjunction with Williamson county we have been assisting vehicle owners wherever their car is registered. That has resulted, as I said, I said seven vehicle owners in your backup. It's really just five. We've only paid for five vehicle repairs so far who have an address in Williamson county. We want you to be aware. As you know, county policy limits our county assistance programs to only helping folks who live within Travis County. This is a state funded program and due to the state requirements and due to the fact that we're trying to reduce emissions in a regional five-county region, that is a decision that we made and so we wanted to make sure that you understood that was happening and see if there was any concerns about that at the moment.
>> do we think that Williamson county has probably served Travis County residents under the same scenario?
>> yes, they have. When somebody calls -- right now we're saying where is your car registered?
>> we have identified, however, one disconnect. And that is in the statute the assumption is once your registration requires that you would renew in your county where you reside. While we have no documentation that we request at this time would ask a resident how long have you lived in Williamson county or hays county or whatever, there is a disconnect in once we know how long that person has lived outside of Travis County, are we actually assisting a person repair their car who is illegally registered or inappropriately registered? So we have consulted with legal on that and I think we just have to talk it through with the state to figure out what their experience has been with this because pááráupjtt programs, we ask questions regarding residency. And you must be a resident of Travis County for at least 60 days in our programs. There had not been a residency requirement documented in this program simply because the car was considered the recipient of the service.
>> explain real quickly, if you live in san marcos, and in particular hays county since I don't think they voted into the program, but you drive -- your job is in Travis County. What do we do with the folks that have to be here, we don't have any jurisdiction over that? They can just drive their vehicles here?
>> right. There is a remote sensing program going on and they have caught people -- they have to be caught twice as a high emitter, which is an even higher than what you're being tested on. Those people get a letter and they say if they're from one of the tigious counties to one of the program counties, they say you have to go get your car, you have to go get it inspected and get it fixed before your next registration is due and they have a record of them in state and the tax office keeps a record. That is going to be very rare that they catch somebody twice. Also in the law, if you drive your car more than 60% of the time into one of the program counties, you are supposed to get it inspected, but there is no way to --
>> really monitor and regulate that.
>> right.
>> our issue was to bring that forward because I believe when we discussed this at the court because the program is being conducted out of health and human services and our policies routinely require residency, we felt it necessary for the court to be aware of this disconnect that we're experiencing and we'll be working with legal and the tceq to try to work it out so we get to something that makes sense for our policies and our constituents.
>> so next time we're going to talk -- next we're going to talk about the f.t.e. As you can see in the -- you don't have it up anymore. Each corridor the call center is one person basically, one phone line, and they're getting about 15,000 calls, 500 calls a month basically. So it's very busy. We thought that this might happen and we did include in our budget that was approved by tceq and the court and made part of the grant activities plan for this program one additional f.t.e. For this call center because we wanted to wait and see how it was actually going to work. It's a new program for everybody, and what the volume was going to be. I’m going to let the hhs staff talk more specifically about that, but we are recommending at this time that we go ahead and budget them.
>> as a reminder, when hhs stepped forward to do this program, we reported to the court that we would start the program with a temp staff and that we would try to wait until we had some data to support whatever our f.t.e. Needs might be at the time. We are operating this program through a call center that actually is phoned into our Jonestown site, so all calls related to this service go into Jonestown and then once we have determined that the car is eligible and we do what we would call presumptive eligibility on the household, so we ask a few questions that would give us an indication of whether their income would qualify, at that point residents can then be directed to a county community center has closest to them. So, for example, you may live in oak hill but your initial call goes into jones town. Once we determine that you may be potentially eligible, you may certainly go into the west rural community center to receive the service, but the calls all go to jones town. And so this is the reason for -- so the numbers that you see here are into one central call center and so we're now asking that we be allowed to turn this temporary spot into a full-time f.t.e.
>> the funding that pays for this f.t.e. Is coming from the fees that's being collected from that $953,000 amount of money that's been set aside?
>> that's correct.
>> and I guess my question then, do you have money available now to take care of that f.t.e. Shortfall as far as the grant portion of that money?
>> the monies have been collected enough to cover that. We clearly included that in the budget that we -- that tceq approved for our program. You know, technically we have $100,000 minus $80,000 as you can see in the thing, but tceq again reimburses us, so the minute we turn something in that says okay, now we have an additional salary, they're currently playing for the associated administrative position, corey manchaca's position as well, so they pay for that. They pay benefits, they pay everything.
>> move approval of 13-c.
>> second.
>> subject to payment or reimbursement by the tceq from the lirap funds. My guess is we would probably have to bring this person on advanced payment, 30, 60 days from now, could receive payment from the state.
>> that would be correct.
>> 90 days from now we have not received payment, there's reason to worry.
>> I would say that would be true, judge. [ laughter ]
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> thank you for your input. This program is working pretty much as we thought it would.
>> it really is.
>> and the obstacles so far have been rather minor in the grand scheme of things.
>> yes, sir.
>> judge, I’d like to take a minute to congratulate and tell shaleen that I’ve heard she's going to be leaving Travis County and I just want you to know that you are my favorite environmentalist. [ laughter ]
>> and we have more than one.
>> you've done a great job and I wish you all the luck over there in that pink building. And thank goodness we've got somebody going over there that we know because as you well know, we have to come over there, so I’m glad there's going to be one of us over there. So we look forward to seeing you over there.
>> I’m going to say I’m not going very far. I appreciate it. I expect to be working very closely with all of you. Thank you.
>> congratulations.
>> and we understand if you don't invite us to your going away party. [ laughter ]
>> thank you very much.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, March 15, 2006 10:38 AM