Travis County Commissioners Court
June 16, 2009,
Item 27
27.
consider and take appropriate action on the following items related to planning for and the use of community development block grant funding from the u.s.
department of housing and urban development: a, receive update on the current projects and timeliness; b, receive results of the needs identification from the spring public engagement process; c, request to approve the potential projects for the program year 2009 action plan; and d, other related items.
>> good mornings.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> christie moffat, Travis County health and human services.
last week went over with the court the update on the current projects and timeliness and also results of the identification from the spring public hearing engagement process.
that information is in your backup from last week.
this year we would like to
>> [indiscernible] community block grant dollars.
last week I also mentioned that -- that while h.u.d.
had originally identified us that we were going to receive $866,432, we were notified at the end of last week or on June 2nd that there was going to be a change to our allocation amount.
we now know what that amount is, it was a change of $52, so we are anticipating receiving $866,380.
that change is a result of 27 different communities challenging the census data that was used for the formula allocation.
>> so we get 52 more or less.
>> 52 less, yes.
>> well, I was about to get real happy.
now I'm a little sad.
>> I know.
it's very sad to lose the $52.
okay, so I would like to go through the projects.
we actually provided you a one pager today to help you go through this process more quickly.
we provided to you at your desk today.
so this -- this matrix, what it shows is the recommendations for '09 funding and any carryover from this program year or the previous program years to help you understand the total funding that we are expecting for these projects.
so for -- for -- for py '09 we are requesting the court approve lave land street improvements an investment of $60,000.
this is to assist with phase two of this project for acquisition of right-of-way and also pay for project management time.
we are anticipating the project management time to be approximately $10,000 and the acquisition to be approximately 50 thousand dollars.
this is in addition to rolling over approximately $39,159 for design that hasn't -- that project is ongoing right now, the design is underway.
and we will just be rolling over that money to continue to fund that design.
a total investment of $99,159.
and we are also requesting to invest additional dollars into owner occupied rehabilitation minor home repair.
we are requesting a change in the program design of this project.
staff were looking at different programs across the country to determine how best to invest these dollars and originally we had determined $5,000 as a maximum.
for spending these dollars.
it coincided with our current home repair program, funded through the general funds, implemented by health and human services, once we looked at the guidelines a bit more critically, we understood that the $5,000 investment actually would make it difficult for us to select houses to bring houses up to housing quality standards, which were require -- we're required to do if we invest rehabilitation dollars.
so for $5,000 we would actually be isolated to only emergency home repair if we wanted to continue with that $5,000 cap.
so staff are requesting to increase the cap to up to $24,999.
this would be a five year forgivable loan, where the homeowner would have to provide more payments and if they were to sell their house within that five year time period, we would receive part of the money or part of the investment back.
we would be requesting initially that this project be done by a subrecipient.
if for some reason we are not able to find a qualified subrecipient to do this project, we would look internally and determine whether or not we needed to move forward with our health and human services program.
so that's in the amount of $130,000.
we would also take the $106,000 that has been approved last year for a total investment of minor home repair of $236,136.
for home buyer assistance, this is actually a medium priority.
the project selection criteria that the court had approved earlier in the spring, we had recommended that you only approve high priority projects.
but based upon the economic turndown and also the housing market, we feel that it's critical to continue to support people having funds available to purchase houses at an affordable price to them.
so we feel like this is an excellent opportunity for us to support homeowners, people who want to purchase homes.
because the lending markets have tightened and you are actually needing more money now to be able to make homes more affordable.
we thought this was a good investment this year.
so we are recommending 528 -- 528 hundred thousand dollar investments.
so they can provide gap assistance and also down payment assistance.
we have the detail of those specific projects in your backup.
both projects allow the opportunity for program income to come in, which would be reinvested back into the housing finance corporation so that this program could hopefully eventually continue to pay for itself.
>> let's say you use $100,000 for down payment assistance, and you later get back 25,000, how does the timeliness requirement come into play?
>> so what happens is in any year that you receive program income, you have to put it into your -- into your line of credit.
so you have to spend your program income first.
and so chance is that you have to have -- what happens is you have to have a pretty good handle on the amount of programming that you think that you're going to spend so you can build your programs, spend down the program income plus your regular allocation.
so it requires some planning.
but if you are reinvesting that program income into a program like down payment assistance or gap financing, those are fairly easy projects to implement and in a quick manner and so it can spend down moneys pretty quickly.
>> so do you have 12 months after receipt of the pay back?
>> it's all about the ratio.
you have to stay within your 1.5 ratio.
it's not necessarily about time.
>> okay.
thank you.
so moving on to public service, we are anticipating a $39,300 carryover from service expansion in program year 2008.
so ensure we don't have a lot of rollover next year, we are asking for only $35,000 of the py '09 money, for a total investment of $74,300.
i want to make a note with public services and also administration and planning, we have to worry about a cap.
we are not allowed to spend -- not anymore than 15% of our total amount of our allocation for that year in public services.
that's why it's critical to make those decisions about how much rollover because we have to be very careful not to go over 15%.
with public services, youth services, we are also requesting to include this project.
this project would fund flexible funding for youth who are at risk of developing juvenile detention or going to juvenile detention.
they might have some mental health issues or just generally at risk for a variety of things.
so these dollars are used by the social worker in the expansion project, also some of the social workers at the community centers to assist children in the unincorporated areas with things like mentoring, tutoring, maybe going to a band camp, purchasing a -- an instrument, things like that to engage them in other activities to keep them from moving into things that might put them at risk for juvenile detention.
so we are requesting an investment of $32,100.
with that total investment in public services with the social work expansion plus the youth services, it's a total investment of 12.3% of the dollars for py '09, we are well within our 15% cap.
for administration and planning, there are two projects, the water and wastewater planning, which currently we are not requesting an additional py '09 money because there is enough funds if we really over the project from py 2008 to fund the position.
you will see that it's only $45,000.
the reason why it's only $45,000 is because we have requested that t.n.r.
have the project manager put in some of their project delivery costs into the projects.
so we are trying to move to more of a -- of a philosophy of if -- if there is project management costs related to lave lane, for example, that if -- if he has to spend $10,000 of his time or x amount of hours working that project, so he's rolling those costs into his budget so that it's hitting less on the administration and planning budget.
finally we are requesting 81, $280 out of the py '09 allocation for administration and planning with an additional rollover of approximately $30,000.
that brings our admin budget to $111,280.
what this allows us to do is to pay for approximately .6 of the f.t.e.
of the cdbg planner and also allows us to pay for our
>> [indiscernible] fair housing choice and the remainder of the operating costs for cdbg.
if the court were to approve this today, it would actually eliminate our one-time funding request for additional funds for the cdbg planner to fund their position.
>> if I may just give a little detail on that.
at the time that we accepted the cdbg project, the court funded one position, well funded two positions actually before our allocation was reduced.
so at that time the department actually -- actually had a vacancy and so we retained one f.t.e.
and we have one f.t.e.
that is funded through the department salary savings.
so it's -- it's funded each year with one-time money.
so I think what ms.
moffett is alluding to is by rolling a portion of those costs into the cdbg administration.
we will reduce -- remove the need to fund that position through the department salary savings.
>> so you have put planning and budget on notice?
>> yes.
i have talked with our analysts and they are aware of the requests.
>> okay.
>> and so if you take the rollover from py 2008 plus the administration dollars for py '09, it comes to a total percentage of 18%, which is under our 20% cap.
so we are staying within our caps.
and we are spending the money as we need to within the program year.
>> do we have reason to believe to our subrecipient contractors are available for contract so we can implement the owner occupied rehabilitation program?
>> well, we've -- we have asked some questions of some different people and the problem is that it's in the unincorporated area.
what we find is that most of the people who are doing home repair focus mostly in the city of Austin.
so while we think that the potential exists that there will be interest, we can't guarantee it.
but we don't want to prohibit us from, you know, going and looking at subrecipients, we want to go through the process and hopefully we will find someone who is interested.
and if they are, then that's great.
and if not, then we can look internally and hopefully build upon the system that has already been developed with the stimulus money, through the weatherization program, we could piggyback on it.
>> I think we have every reason to believe that capacity will be created in this area.
simply because of the number of dollars that will be coming into the community over the next two years.
>> when will we know for sure?
>> when we are -- when we have an r.f.p.
to have purchasing relief.
>> when will we know for sure?
>> [laughter]
>> we are hoping before the end of the year.
>> all right.
how does that fit with our timeliness requirement if.
>> I have built in the fact that we will start spending money I believe it's in March.
start drawing down money.
>> yes.
>> if the subrecipient option falls through, do we have the capacity in house to do this?
>> no.
we do not.
>> okay.
>> let me just say that I chatted with work source yesterday.
they have been working with a.c.c.
for -- to try to create additional workforce capacity to -- to use weatherization dollars coming from stimulus to the city of Austin and Travis County.
and there's a big question mark.
about our community's ability to generate really private contractors with the work source to -- to spend those dollars in a manner consistent with the federal requirement.
that's why I asked the question.
so I think that -- that we need to issue our r.f.p.
as soon as we can.
and make the determination and I would start looking in-house to try to figure out what changes we have to make in order to do this ourselves if we have to.
the good news is -- the bad news is you don't automatically generate the capacity as far as medical examiners and psychiatrists, once we have the money to hire them, finding them really turninged out to be the big problem.
what I'm told unless we do a whole lot of workforce development in this area we will find ourselves short of the labor pool that we need.
>> I think, too, that burden also falls on the state with us because they have retained or will retain about $17 million in -- in dollars that they have identified for training.
now, they are a little short on details around that at this time.
but hopefully between the efforts locally and the state recognition of that fact, that there's going to be limited -- companies who will be -- ready to, you know, sort of turnkey into this project, we will hopefully generate some others in -- in a timely fashion.
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> you would have to post your amendment to the plan, but other than that it's possible.
>> once we got an r.f.p.
back that didn't find successful candidates, we could definitely make that change fairly easily if we determine we also can't find a mechanism to go through the county.
but the nice thing is that I've actually been contacted by people out of state who do this kind of work and I've referred them to the purchasing website to get registered.
so there's a lot of interest being generated by these dollars that might help whether the people are here actually in Travis County or not.
>> my final point is that the state dollars that you referenced are funneled through the workforce development commission, so in this area it's work source.
>> so I think the state is relying on the regional workforce commissions to get the job training done.
so there's a way to keep up with whether we're making progress simply by touching base with work source and other workforce development commissions.
my only point -- not to rain on the parade, but my point is that we are really to monitor that and make the call in order for us to be timely with h.u.d.
>> yes.
>> and make the changes internally that we need to make.
>> yes.
>> well, and we've been in close touch with purchasing around the stimulus money that I think is still related to this because our experience in weatherization tells us that there could be a significant number of homes who can't benefit from the weatherization because they require other repairs.
so I think that in moving through the purchasing process, we are hopeful for a prebid conference and those kinds of things that will give us some idea of how many contractors are out there and available to do this work.
>> when are we anticipating the prebid conferencing?
>> I don't know.
it hasn't been scheduled yet.
i think that for a lot of obvious reasons we wanted to get our application in and be able to assure everyone that the money is coming.
and so that application is due next Tuesday, as a matter of fact.
>> and the other thing to take note of, I think it's important that we provide appropriate support to the people who were doing this.
because when you're looking at the kind of -- with stimulus money specifically, when you're looking at the kind of reporting that's going to be happening, it's not typically something that a general contractor who is doing construction does.
so there's going to be -- have to be a lot of technical assistance, a lot of support.
and I think the more clear direction we can provide and the more available we are, the more successful it will be.
>> okay.
>> the good news is I think that we have a top-notch housing program.
so that certainly gets us way out ahead of the curve.
>> this is the '09 plan.
>> yes.
the '09 plan is the street improvements for lave lane, the owner occupied remodel home repair, home buyer assistance, the social work services expansion, the youth services expansion and the administration dollars, those are specifically for '09.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion?
>> judge?
>> yes, sir.
come forward.
>> judge, when these items came up for discussion -- gus pena, I'm sorry.
when they came up for discussion I failed to make some appropriate comments on the project number 4 continuation of fss social work service expansion project.
what we found out in the community is I used to work for Austin-Travis County advocate program, adcap back in 1994, 1995 at gardner-betts juvenile probation.
and one of the things we found out about a lot of the youth, they're acquiring anger management problems.
and it's increasing.
i think it's very important to this item -- I don't know the funding mechanism.
i'm learning about it, but I think it's very important that we do -- that this actually be approved because we see a lot of problems out there with the youth and anger management, not just adult mental health issues, but this is very important that we continue to address aggressively in our community not only our youth are becoming more aggressive, not only aggressive, anger problems and anger management, lack of skills, and adult also, but this is very important and I would ask that the public be educated on this project number 4.
i'm going to pass it around to the community.
i failed to do it and aapologize to the community because this is very important.
it's a key mechanism, if I might use that word.
it might not be correct.
but in the lives of the young people, anger management is a problem.
they call it something else now.
now they have a label where kids are labeled.
but anyway, I would ask that this be a priority.
and I know that sometimes the funding is not there.
i'm just learning about the process, but I can tell you one thing working with these kids for many kids, I'm currently working with them, that there is a great need out there for intervention, prevention and also counseling.
>> on number 5?
>> project number 4, sir, the social service expansion project.
it has something having to do with -- am I correct?
>> it's the youth and family assessment, the flexible funding.
>> project 5.
>> I'm sorry.
i looked at the wrong one.
>> not a problem.
>> and project 4 actually helps implement project 5.
they're actually very interwoven.
>> the social workers actually have a pool of money that they can access for services.
so that's why those two go together so nicely.
also that program just briefly is a partnership with aisd in that the children who are sometimes referred into that project come from the impact teams at the schools, which means that a person in the school system has identified a concern with the child that they believe they can benefit from additional services from a provider in the community.
so the combination of the social work services coupled with the referrals and actually the partnership with aisd helps to provide children with very needed services.
>> and in this particular project we owe reach with manor isd and also del valle isd.
>> and aisd is on the outlying areas.
this is important, judge, because obviously the best case scenario is to prevent, but when prevention mechanism is compromised, we go into intervention mode and that is important to keep the youth out of gardner-betts and actually into possible criminal activity and other activities that are not appropriate.
anyway, I just wanted to interject some comments that I thought would be helpful.
thank y'all very much.
>> thank you.
did you have comments?
okay.
any more discussion of the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> next week we will be bringing to you the draft of the py '09 action plan for the court to approve so that it can go up for public comment beginning June 24th through July 23rd.
and there will be two public hearings.
i believe it's June 30th and July 14th, although I might have to check that.
but I'm pretty sure those are the two dates.
>> can we approve the application that needs to be filed by next Tuesday?
>> it will be on the agenda next Tuesday.
>> okay.
>> it's in the process right now.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 2:41 PM