Travis County Commissioners Court
December 4, 2007
Item 12
12. Consider and take appropriate action on items related to the community development block grant (cdbg) provided by the u.s. Department of housing and urban development: should i read all of them or should i just read them one at at time and act as we go through them.
>> one at a time.
>> a is receive the results of the environmental assessment for the northridge acres water improvement project;
>> good afternoon, commissioners, judge, christie moffat travis county health and human services. As required in 24 cfr part 58, h.u.d. Requires that we do an environmental assessment on any project that commits head dollars. The north ridge water improvement project has a human -- has an impact to the human environment and so we had to do something called environmental assessment. As a result of that environmental assessment, we determined that there is no significant impact to the human environment. There are some mitigation measures which are very minor in terms of just construction kinds of things like debris, noise, that kind of thing. Jeff hoff from the t.n.r. Department completed the environmental assessment for us and this environmental assessment is also on behalf of williamson county who has cdbg entitlement dollars funding the north ridge project as well. Moving on to b if there are no questions, just to review.
>> just to receive the results which we have just done.
>> correct.
>> questions, comments? Everything seems to be in order?
>> correct. Okay. B is to approve the advertisement of the finding of no significant impact and request for release of funds for the northridge acres water improvement project;
>> h.u.d. Requires that we provide a public comment period so that the citizens can respond to the results of the environmental assessment. That is a 15-day public comment to travis county. That will commence on december 14th and end on december 31st. Those comments can go to jeff hoff as related in the advertisements. Then there's a second comment period that is make i'd to h.u.d. And that is in response to not only the environmental assessment but also the -- the release of funds for travis and williamson county cdbg entitlement dollars. And that period will end on january 22nd. And so -- so basically what happens after that, is as long as there are no comments that would preclude us from moving forward, h.u.d. Will release the funds to us on january 23rd, so that we could move forward with entering into construction contracts.
>> this item is to approve the advertisement and the advertisement is in our backup.
>> that is correct. The advertisement will go in english and in spanish in the austin american-statesman, the austin chronicle, round rock leader and the pflugerville flag.
>> move approval.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. C is to receive project status for program year 2006 projects.
>> yes. We have four different projects that have been funded through program year 2006 funds. As you will hear in the next item, so far we have expended no dollars and provided no services that directly impact people in the unincorporated community. However, in terms of the project progress so far, with regard to apache shores substandard street grade improvements, we have completed boilerplate for design contract, invitation for bid, also construction contract. We have completed a surs sorry review of -- cursory review of environmental issues, identified endangered species act and construction. Because we had the four month delay from h.u.d. Because of the erroneous allocation amounts in september, and it actually delayed us four months so that we didn't execute a contract until january, we decided to go ahead and implement both year one and year two apache shore street improvement projects at one time. That would provide cost efficiency in terms of going out for bid for different, for the rfq and the construction and also provide some time efficiency in terms of staff time for project management. In terms of north ridge acres, the design for the water lines is completed. And also we have completed the environmental assessment. So
>> [indiscernible] is getting some required signatures, doing a few administrative tasks and then going out for the invitation for bid for construction. In terms of the land acquisition project, we received training on acquisition and -- and the uniform relocation act and section 104 d which basically set the standards in we displace or require relocation of anyone what our obligation is. Also sets the standard for acquisition regulations that we have to follow. We have also consulted with the travis county attorney's office regarding a variety of different options to implement this agreement with austin habitat for humanity. At this time we are going to be coming forward to a recommendation with the court in the future about using the subrecipients, that seems to be the most expeditious way to get the project started and also the best use of time of travis county staff. And then also we are developing an anti-displacement relocation plan, which is required by h.u.d. And it needs to be in place prior to entering into a subrecipient agreement. Then finally, our social work expansion project has been delayed believe it or not due to hiring positions. We had two positions for social worker, we tried to hire three different people to fill those positions, all three declined. So we went back, re-evaluated. We decided that we needed a -- more competitive salary and so we went back, decided maybe we also needed to hire a spanish speaking social worker if we could because the demand out in precinct 4 require that you have someone who is bilingual. We had difficulty finding qualified bilingual applicants. We are deciding for the first year's project we would like to reprogram that money in the spring to another project. But we will move forward with year two's project. We have found some applicants, we have interviewed those people and we are hopefully in the final areas of -- of trying to get somebody on board. But it would just be one person because of budget constraints. So -- so that is your update on the projects.
>> what does that job pay?
>> well, the market salary survey it's gone up to a pay grade 17. It was a 15. So i believe it starts close to $40,000.
>> so you can't find a person that will go to work in this community that's bilingual for $40,000? That has the qualifications.
>> that a master' in social work. It requires a masters. It does not require bilingual status. We are doing the best we can and unfortunately it's a very competitive job market. By the time we can make our offer, you know, it's not always as good as other offers or as quick.
>> how is it advertised?
>> it's advertised through the website and i -- i believe through the papers, I?m not sure. I could check on them.
>> through what else?
>> through the newspapers and also we have sent out -- we have different agents or different organizations that people are members of that recruit social workers or know social workers and so we have -- we have also tapped into those resources to identify potential candidates. We have a couple of excellent candidates that we are in the final steps of getting all of the paperwork together to be able to make an offer. We hope within the next two to three weeks that we would have somebody on board.
>> that is the beginning salary.
>> i believe so.
>> what's the ending salary? In other words what's the range from this amount to what amount?
>> I?m not sure. I can check and get back with you.
>> in other words, is it advertised as such.
>> i believe it's advertised as minimum to midpoint i think is how it's advertised. But we've had sufficient response since we were able to increase the salary range due to the market salary survey.
>> the status report that we just received are the ones that h.u.d. Received in 2006?
>> no. It will be a little different because this update is related to -- to november or, you know, until, you know, december 4th. The caper, the next item, what they are going to receive is information that took us through september 30th. Which is the end of their program year.
>> they -- you may want to see me before you put that in the mail. Put a little more positive spin on some of it.
>> okay.
>> d is to approve the draft of the program year 2006 consolidated annual performance evaluation report for public comment;
>> so i appreciate your willingness to accept the draft yesterday. Around 12.
>> we are here to serve.
>> thank you very much. It took some time to get the caper going. The performance and evaluation report is basically a look at the different ways that travis county addresses the community housing and economics development needs for the entire county for the unincorporated population. There are a lot of mandates that h.u.d. Prescribes that we report on that cdbg does not fund. So this document is actually a consolidation of health and human services, transportation and natural resources as well as the travis county housing finance corporation. We used a lot of information from the social service contract investments that the county makes. And so it is a consolidated look at -- at the kinds of services that we provide to address homelessness, poverty, h.i.v. Aids, housing affordability, and as well as community development. So just to -- to kind of give you an idea of some of the things that we were requested to do, were to identify some -- some different things that impacted our performance in terms of not being able to spend any dollars thus far and those things that we identify was that its our first year as a cdbg, urban entitlement community. That is a large start-up for any community that starts cdbg. You know, i haven't asked a lot of people, i don't know if there are a lot of communities who remember their first year of cdbg. But i doubt a lot of them spent a lot of money. There's a lot of systems and infrastructure and foundations to put in place to support grant compliance. And in addition there was a four month delay with the hudnell grant agreement. And -- h.u.d. Grant agreement. A loss of two cdbg staff which increased work loads. There was a lack of experience with cdbg that in itself created a large learning curve and -- in trying to make sure that we knew what we were doing in that -- and that everything was within compliance, regulations. Also, we had technical assistance delays. We asked interesting questions apparently that ended up having to go to the headquarters office in washington for clarification. There wasn't anything unusual. We just were being extremely diligent and to make sure that our proper -- procurement documents were the best that they could be. Then also the hiring difficulties that we experienced with getting the public service project. So that's kind of -- some of the issues that we identified for h.u.d. That kept us from spending any money. However, we have an implementation plan that we have -- that we think will address any timeliness issues of spending that we may in july of 2008. We feel at this point that we will be within our timeliness ratio of 1.5 of our allocation amount by july of 2008.
>> move approval of d.
>> second.
>> that's the draft program accommodation annual performance evaluation. When is that public comment period, the same as the others that we advertise?
>> the public comment period is starting tomorrow, december 5th and until december 20th and the public hearing is next tuesday, on the 11th at 9:00 a.m.
>> in the commissioners court?
>> in the commissioners court, correct.
>> any more discussion of d? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. You mentioned e, which is receive cdbg project implementation schedule.
>> correct.
>> okay.
>> in your backup, there is a -- there is all of the projects for year one and two are listed. Along with our projected target dates for implementing different stages of the funding. And we are -- we are expecting that by july of 2008 we will have -- well over $400,000 spent out of the cdbg funds. Which is what our dollar amount is to stay with our timeliness ratio. That's it.
>> okay. Discussion of that? Consider it received. F is other related issues.
>> i don't believe we have any. So ...
>> is our -- is your assistant still on board, the one that we recently hired.
>> she is diligently working at the office trying to get some of our formatting issues with the document --
>> i was almost afraid to ask that question.
>> i wouldn't be smiling too much if that were true.
>> thank you very much, appreciate your patience.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, December 5, 2007, 18:30 AM