Travis County Commissioners Court
June 10, 2008
Item 17
Item number 17 is to revise -- revised language. We made a couple of -- I think c was what we changed. Consider and take appropriate action on the following items related to planning for and the use of community development block grant funding from the united states department of housing and urban development. A, request to approve $500,000 in program year 2008 funding for infrastructure to support affordable housing development to Austin habitat for humanity. B, request to approve targeting program year 2008 home rehabilitation project to households at or below 50% of median family income. C, adding a provision to chapter 84, Travis County code, which allows for following all required state and federal requirements if state or federal funding is used -- it should be state or federal funding probably, is used for substandard road projects. And d, other related issues. I will need an additional week myself on item a. That's the half million dollars for habitat for humanity. I need do some additional due diligence. Afternoon?
>> afternoon. Christie moffett, Travis County health and human services. Would you like me to give you an overview of a?
>> if you would like.
>> okay. This project would be for half a million dollars to support infrastructure costs which total approximately one million dollars for the py '06 and py '07 land acquisition project that habitat for humanity was approved for in years 1 and 2 for cdbg funding. What this project would do is lower the cost -- make the homes more affordable by reducing the infrastructure cost by $500,000, thus reducing the total cost of the homes. We'll provide additional information for next week. B is the home rehabilitation project. The Commissioners court approved a home rehabilitation project on may 27th for program year 2008. This is the first time we'll be doing a home rehab project using cdbg funds. This project would be managed by a at this time not designated nonprofit. We would go out for formal 96 receive bids to determine who would actually be providing the services. At the time that the court approved the project, we didn't determine if there was a target income demographic that the court wanted to target the program to. Staff are recommending that we target the project for 50% of at or below median family income. In your backup you have a comparison of the current Travis County weatherization and home repair programs that are currently at 125% federal poverty guidelines as well as the 30% and 50% median family incomes. As you can see based on the way that those numbers are calculated, there isn't an exact fit between 30% or 50% median family income. So based on the fact that homeowners at 50% of median family income could possibly benefit from these home repair and weatherization services and because they're very closely related to 125% of fpig, we're recommending that level.
>> do we think we would be able to go to our waiting list and pull eligible residents?
>> what we know is of the 107 people on the waiting list, most of those people reside in an unincorporated area. So there are 28 households that we will have to look and see if they are in the uncorporated area. And if there is anyone on the waiting list, then we can make arrangements to make a referral to the nonprofit.
>> that's where I壇 start. We may as well cut into that if we can.
>> good point. Go ahead.
>> of those on the waiting list, do we know what increment they fall into if mfi were applied?
>> they would have to be at or below 1 -- they would have to be below 50% median family income.
>> are they falling between the 30th and 50th percentile?
>> that I don't have details, but if we do 50% of mfi, then we're fairly assured that everybody on the waiting list would qualify. If their income hasn't changed.
>> publicly state what is covered in this particular program. As far as dealing with a person's dwelling.
>> well, the cap would be $5,000 per household, so it would be able to assist any owner-occupied single-family home where repair to the home wouldn't be more than $5,000.
>> I知 more get to go what kind of repairs?
>> it could be plumbing, roofing, weatherization in terms of improving weather stripping, windows. That's the best I can do for you off the top of my head right now.
>> and the city of Austin energy efficiency measures are covered too, right?
>> yes.
>> because I know the city plays a major role in this. I was wondering is there any preclusion for incorporated areas other than the city of Austin to get involved in such a setting?
>> this money would be targeted to anyone who lives outside of any city limit within Travis County. So if somebody resided within the manor city limits or within Jonestown, they would not be eligible.
>> okay. I just want to make sure the eligibility criteria is something folks are aware of.
>> can they do driveways? Or could it be garage apartment? Is that a kind of technicality.
>> it would have to be the repair of something existing. You can technically do home rehabilitation where you can actually tear a house down to its foundation and reconstruct it. That's an allowable practice by cdbg, but that isn't actually what we would be targeting here. This would be doing things more like removing architectural barriers, adding ramps, doing general home repairs, improving energy efficiency, that kind of thing.
>> you need a new ramp or wheelchair.
>> yes.
>> doesn't have to be just inside the house.
>> yeah, it could be the exterior as well.
>> move approval of b as described. Discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> okay. And then c I知 actually going to hand over to steve.
>> thanks, christie. Good afternoon judge and Commissioners. Item c, I requested to be put on the agenda. After listen to go some discussion about this -- after listening to some discussion about this program some weeks ago, we may not need to make this actual change to chapter 84 and I値l explain why, but it does help me talk about some issues related to the standards that we're using. Chapter 84, the substandard roads program that you're all very knowledgeable about was created to address problems throughout the county, with getting roads accepted that for whatever reason never got accepted. It has no bearing on economic status. It is actually structured such that when you look at a project, its eligibility for using our county funds, you look at a different set of criteria than you do if it is a cdbg funded project. Really the only really common theme between a cdbg funded and a county funded substandard road project is the word substandard road. They both have that in common. Cdbg funded projects are selected based upon essentially our ability to find clusters of low to moderately income families in an area where it makes economic sense to make a road improvement. That may mean that in order to get that project done, you would not necessarily be in compliance with chapter 84, which we use for county funded projects. For example, in chapter 84, we say that the right-of-way must have been dedicated prior to 1997. Well, when the right-of-way is dedicate it had has no bearing on trying to help out the low to moderate income families. It's really -- that is right a requirement in our county policy along with a couple of others to try to make sure that the program is not taken advantage of by developers. We did not want a developer who owned a block or series of lots along a road to come to us and say I want to you use your substandard road money and just benefit him. So it can increase the value of the lots and make more money on it. So we put safeguards into our chapter 84. Those safeguards don't apply to a cdbg funded project.
>> because the cdbg already has safeguards in place --
>> number one is they have to meet the economic requirement.
>> disadvantaged?
>> that's the primary one. It could be to get to that cluster of homes you have to go through a stretch of road that many of the lots are owned by one person. And at that point we would come to the court and say, hey, that is in violation of the county policy, but to make this project work for cdbg funded, you kind of have to accept that. And we would ask the court for a waiver along lines. The thing that triggered this was the judge had asked should we be requiring the property owners to donate right-of-way as it's written in chapter 84. If you require that on the cdbg-funded side, it could very well be that you put an awful lot of planning, an awful lot of public meetings, an awful lot of engineering into the cdbg-funded project. And when it comes time to donate that property owner says no, I don't want to do that. And all of that effort up to that point is for naught. And christie can explain what the risk of that is to the program, if you don't mind.
>> what we have right now is a question outstanding about going through a project where you get to the design or environmental stage and for some reason you choose not to follow up with construction. And so the question that's been posed is whether or not those dollars have to hit your administrative and planning cap rather than be allowable as a community development cost, which as you know our administration and planning cap is 20% of our total grant amount for any particular year. So there is a potential that if we require certain things to occur prior to going into construction, that we would have to move those costs into administration and planning, and it would impact any other administration and planning dollars that we have currently planned.
>> would this be in essence a double dip where we would be be doing administrative under cdbg as well as administrative under chapter 84?
>> no. I think what she's saying is if it gets plugged into the administrative rather than project cost line item, the administration comes out of county coffers instead of st.edward's. So we get to put an awful lot of money into this thing and I guarantee it would be less expensive to buy the easement than to kiss all that money off that we spent.
>> well, I still have the same problem I had last week. I知 sitting here visualizing hundreds of very, very poor Travis County residents from whom we squeezed a right-of-way dedication to make the substandard roads project work. So in my view it's unfair to them for us not to try to apply the same county policy to cdbg projects. Now, in this case it seems to me that we're way down the road when this issue surfaced. So I have no -- I think we ought to consider it as a variance if we must go there. So two thing. One is that if there's a state or federal requirement that you not get right-of-way dedication, then on cdbg projects I can live with it. But otherwise if we can do it, I think we ought to apply our policy across the board and expect a right-of-way dedication.
>> we have posed that question, judge.
>> where we cannot get the right-of-way dedication for some unusual reason, then I think it ought to be brought to the court and a variance requested. So I would put on us responsibility for up front publicizing that in our substandard roads project, we expect right-of-way to be dedicated. And every situation that I can recall where we went in and did this for residents there, this was up front. We told them. And we used stress sweat equality a whole lot more than we do right now. But I think we ought to stick to that, however I don't think we ought to be completely adamant about it. So where the project is almost done or where it's -- everything is in place except for one or two parcels of land, then I can see us granting waivers. But everybody else in the subdivision who has dedicated right-of-way won't like it. And if I知 poor and you were to come to me and same, I understand you want us to improve your substandard roads, I will say yes, I do. Well, we will need some land to put the road through there or to improve the road. I understand that. And if you say well, do you want to be paid for it or not, I知 going to say I want to be paid for it. And they will too. So -- and in every case in the past the situation was the same. In order for us to do this road, we will need those who benefit to dedicate right-of-way. We will come in and pay for the design, we pay for the engineering, we'll pay for the construction, and we'll assume responsibility for future maintenance thereafter. In exchange, we will need you to dedicate right-of-way. And in most cases it wasn't a whole lot of land, but it basically determined whether we could stand the road. Because in most cases the roads are substantial because they're too narrow. To widen them we need a little right-of-way. So I知 not -- I don't know that I would just put my foot down and say no waiver, no waiver, but I would say up front here's how we run the program. But I知 mindful where to use state or federal dollars we have to change the requirement, I知 flexible enough to use that because up front we can determine whether the state or federal dollars are significant enough for us to change our policy, plus we can tell the residents when they're asked, john doe down there, john doe and jane got their roads improved without dedicating right-of-way. Why should i? We can say that was a federal program, federal dollars. State program, state dollars. Are we together?
>> right, judge. I just wanted to add one thing for the benefit of the rest of the court. We don't know for certain whether we can require donation for cdbg funded projects. Federal monies -- if you use them they've all in favor these kinds of strings attached. They have rigid requirements regarding the property.
>> we'll find out.
>> they may come back and say you can make that a policy statement. And we can come back and somebody says can we get a waiver so acquire this piece of property. But they may say no, you can't do that. If that's the case --
>> I can live with it. If they say no, you can't do that, I can live with it because I can look all the other residents in the face and say the federal government wouldn't let us do that.
>> we've got only two projects. The apache shores in precinct three which we're currently working on. Our problem is we never told them in all the public hearings that you're going to have to donate. As far as they know it's a part of the project cost. And some folks have indicated they will donate and we're working on getting lava lane added to it. We haven't said you -- plan on donating. Christie has had conversations and some of them said they will. But where the rubber hits the road is when it comes signing on the dotted line. That's probably where we with need our help to come think about a waiver if we need it. Unless the feds say you just can't do that.
>> when will we hear anything from the feds to let us know one way or the other? Go ahead.
>> we've turned in an e-mail requesting guidance from the h.u.d. San antonio office. They've responded with some clarification. We responded back. I don't have an estimated time that they're going to respond. If it's a question that they're not sure of, they could send it to the force worth field office to talk to the acquisition and relocation specialist or they could send it to headquarters. So it could be anywhere from today to two or three weeks from now before we'll know.
>> it will be good to know whether we can or not.
>> and the other thing I wanted to emphasize to the court is when you think of chapter 84, it's a different set of criteria that we use for cdbg-funded things. If someone were to come and say what are the guidelines you use for cdbg fund? Don't go to chapter 84. There are things in there that would kick every cdbg funded project out. If we're looking for clusters of economically disadvantaged homes and that's what we're trying accomplish rather than having a program it help people anywhere in the county no matter what your financial status is to get your road accepted. Different set of standards. We are using the design standards only out of that chapter 84 for cdbg funded projects.
>> so do we need to approve c today?
>> well, judge, I don't know that we need to add this provision to chapter 84. I used it as a vehicle to get this before y'all, but it seem like we're going to adhere to any state or federal policy no matter what. Right? The county is not going to go through state or federal law.
>> sherri fleming. I think staff's recommendation today to be would be to have us wait for the response from h.u.d. And then should we have to propose an amendment or have more discussion about the potential for waivers, once we know what the h.u.d. Regulations will require, I think that would be a more informed discussion at that point.
>> did she say two weeks or three weeks probably ballpark, maybe.
>> two or three weeks. It just depends on where it ends up going.
>> it would be good to know that. I知 more comfortable about what I知 doing if I knew where the federal government was on that.
>> I would say for the two projects we're currently working on, apache shores and lava lane, the public hearings have been held. We always try to get donations first. We always -- no matter whether it's cdbg or any capital improvement project, we will approach them for a donation first.
>> but there have been times that folks do not want to donate. And of course we have to deal with that.
>> if they don't want to donate on those two projects, I would suggest that we go through the process of acquiring it because we haven't brought this issue up in the public hearing process to this point.
>> exactly. I知 not ready, judge, on this one. I壇 like maybe just to give it a little time. Is it a matter of what as far as a pressing issue? Do we have some time to wait on it a little bit?
>> I think where we are now is we -- the court has approved some planning and design around lava lane. And I think that tnr's concern is well placed in that the short answer is if we do hit this road black block be and we're unable to acquire the land, then we face either having those costs disallowed, which means that the general fund eats any expenditures that we've made related to this project or it will move us up to the 20% on our admin costs, which could potentially eliminate other uses for funding that we have planned as a part of our action plan. So staff certainly want to be able to do the diligence that's necessary. Do you have the opportunity -- should we get an answer that it's just completely unacceptable to the court, we do have the opportunity to reprogram those dollars. We think this is a really worthwhile project, though, so we certainly would like the opportunity to discuss it with you, let you know what the h.u.d. Findings have been and let us have your decision based on how you want to proceed.
>> all right. Thank you.
>> you'll bring it back when it's right.
>> yes.
>> thank you.
>> anything under d? Other related issues?
>> not today.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
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, June 10, 2008 2:31 PM