Travis County Commissioners Court
November 3, 2009,
Item 24
24.
receive update and take appropriate action on regional intergovernmental collaboration on american recovery and reinvestment act of 2009 (arra), including: a, receive report from intergovernmental partners on status of ongoing efforts to collaborate on arra funding; and b, adopt resolution of support for intergovernmental efforts to secure more arra funding through innovative partnerships.
>> judge Biscoe, members of the court, intergovernmental relations.
very briefly on this issue, as you know, the -- president obama assigned the arra bill on February 13th, about nine months old now.
the bill called for an investment of $780 billion, about half of which was going to be in the form of tax cuts or tax credits to individuals.
and since then, the arra money has been coming out in leaps and bounds in some cases and in dribbles in other cases.
i've done a back of the envelope analysis of the economic impact thus far on Travis County and according to the numbers we have, travis -- Travis County, not necessarily the county government itself, but the region, has received approximately $361 million in arra funding so far, has been either committed or already received and has approximately $70.8 million standing by.
so this really is a program that has the big impact on Travis County.
much of the money that has already been distributed or awarded has come as a result of formula grants.
for instance the county received four and a half million dollar weatherization grant that was really based on a formula created out of washington and out of the department of housing and urban development.
the next cycle of money that is going to come up or the next cycles of money that are going to come out of the arra process are going to rely much more on competitive grants.
what congress did in many of these areas was allocate a certain amount of money to, for instance, weatherization and allocate some of that based on formula funding or some of that based on competitive grants.
a lot of that formula money has come out -- Travis County has received some portions of that, but the next cycles are going to be much more competitive in the competitive grants what we hear is they will be looking for both innovative projects and they will be looking for innovative collaborations between -- between governmental entities and non-profits, among governmental entities and so forth.
with that in mind, beginning in April, the -- the representatives from Travis County, the city of Austin, the Austin community college district, the Austin independent school district, capital metro and the Travis County health care district began meeting really just to begin explaining information among ourselves about what grants, different entities were applying for, what grants entities were in line for, whether or not there was a chance to do collaboration in terms of implementing those grants.
so that, for instance, on the -- on the weatherization grant the city and the county both have received grants from the federal government for weatherization moneys and are working together on creating a vendor list and -- and implementation processes and making sure that the city doesn't come in weatherize somebody's houses, the next day somebody from the county knocks on your door and says we are here to weatherize your house.
there's that kind of collaboration going on.
this group has been meeting with the intent to kind of foster that collaboration and deepen it, particularly as we head into this element of competitive grants.
what is presented to you in your backup today is your report that was jointly written by the members of the steering committee, which are representatives from each of those six organizations plus the community action network.
it's a report to you about the activities of of the group so far, our hopes for the future, then also a draft of a resolution which we are asking all six governmental bodies to adopt in support of and to really encourage both the collaborative efforts among the different entities and to encourage our own staffs and our own resources participation in this effort.
that proclamation is drafted -- a draft of that proclamation is in front of you today.
what we're asking for today is for the court to receive this report, which comes from the steering committee and then to adopt the resolution, the draft proclamation that has been presented to you.
>> questions?
comments?
move approval of the resolution.
>> second.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> good work by the committee.
i'm sure you did your part, you and ms.
c.
>> yes, that's right.
>> actually, ms.
c was the wordsmith of both the report and the proclamation.
>> well, let's give her more credit.
>> there we go.
>> 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, November 3, 2009 1:40 PM
