Travis County Commissioners Court
March 9, 2010,
Item 15
>> number 15, consider and take appropriate action on items related to the community development block grant provided by the u.s.
department of housing and urban development.
a, receive the results of the environmental assessment for the lava lane roadway extension project.
and b, advertisement of the findings of no significant impact and request for release of funds for the lava lane roadway extension project.
>> morning.
>> good morning, christie moffett, Travis County health and human services.
back in August of 2008 and also in 2009, the Travis County Commissioners court awarded funding in the amount of over about $140,000 from the community development block grant that we receive annually from the u.s.
department of housing and urban development.
the project was to#gn extend -- to improve an unmaintained county road called lava lane.
part of it is unmaintained by the county.
and also to extend the road to add turnaround gasties so that emergency vehicles and school buses could starting to down that road and provide service to the neighborhood on lava lane.
so we have gone through the process now of design an environmental consultant by the name of cox mcclain has completed the environmental assessment.
so today we are here to provide you a copy of the report and also to request permission to advertise the results of that report so that we can begin the process to request funds -- request approval from h.u.d.
so that we can start to acquire right-of-way and then when we come back to the Commissioners court for program 2010 when we ask for construction dollars that once that process is completed we can also begin construction of that project.
so you will find in your backup the full report from the environmental consultant.
they have to go through a process where they look at the national environmental protection act of 1969 as amended as well as additional hud requirements in term of looking at the projects impact to the environment.
and we are happy to say that they found that there was going to be no significant impact to the environment as a result of this project.
they have a few mitigation issues like making sure that dust suppression is occurring and that in terms of noise control we're operating construction and those kinds of things during normal business hours.
but primarily those are normal kinds of things that happen with any kind of construction project.
so it's nothing of concern.
so that is your official review of the environmental report.
if you have any questions I'm happy to entertain those and then we can move on to the advertising portion.
>> questions?
>> might have that we see the results of the environmental assessment.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> additionally you have attached in your backup an advertisement that will be put into the Austin chronicle in both english and spanish as well as (indiscernible) in spanish so that we can provide due notice as required through federal regulation to the citizens of Travis County about the results of the environmental review.
additionally it also requests permission from h.u.d.
to release funds.
we are estimating that the total project costs for this will be about $475,000.
so again, as I've said previously, the design was -- the design and right-of-way acquisition is for about $140,000.
and then through cost savings from the apache shores construction project as well as an additional allocation of funding that we will be requesting from the Commissioners court in program year 2010 funds, we imagine that it will cost somewhere around $475,000 total.
so at the -- we need permission to go ahead and put the ad in the paper so that we can start the public comment process.
it is not required for a public hearing.
it is simply written comments that are provided to me.
and then we will come back on April 6 to request that the courts certify the results so that we can submit them to h.u.d.
in this capacity the judge is considered the certifying official as part of our grant agreement with the u.s.
department of housing and urban development, we accept responsibility should the environmental review or the environmental assessment be challenged in federal court.
so it is the county that assumes that responsibility instead of h.u.d.
because we are a recipient of federal dollars.
>> this goes in the chronicle and (indiscernible)?
it is part of the american-statesman?
>> yes.
it's the spanish newspaper for the "austin american-statesman".
and the reason why we targeted those papers is because we have a responsibility to advertise in the project location.
and because there aren't any specific newspapers that particularly target that part of the county that we traditionally use, we decided to go with the Austin chronicle and then also we looked at the circulation rates of (indiscernible), and within that zip code they have the highest circulation rates.
>> so it has to be two newspapers or can it be one?
>> we think because of the -- we actually have quite a few -- when we look at our website, we have about 20% of the people hor coming to look at the website hitting our spanish section.
and so we feel like it's really important to make sure -- we're not sure the circulation rates for the spanish population with the Austin chronicle, so we want to make sure it is in -- that both spanish are in the Austin chronicle as well as the (indiscernible) just to be careful, make sure we have our bases covered.
>> I would ask that since we've dn doing the cdbg program we have been using the Austin chronicle, so I would suspect that those folks that might be following our progress are used to seeing our ain a announcements -- announcements in the Austin chronicle.
>> move that we authorize the advertising in both newspapers.
>> second.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
this is a substandard road.
>> yes, it is a substandard road.
part of the road is maintained by the county.
>> that's fine.
>> okay.
>> I'm going to my key question.
under our substandard roads policy, we require dedication of right-of-way.
you mentioned the purchase of right-of-way.
so to we have to formally waive that policy as to this project?
does h.u.d.
require the purchase of right-of-way?
>> h.u.d.
does not require the purchase of right-of-way, but we cannot require people to voluntarily provide the right-of-way.
so we had to assign money.
we asked that question.
i believe it was not long after the court had approved funding for this project.
we did ask that question to h.u.d.
we are not able to tell people they have to voluntarily give us access to right-of-way.
>> then I think we need to formally waive our policy.
>> okay.
>> because that's come up before.
and we insisted on applying our policy.
>> okay.
not to cut you off, but to get to the key question.
>> is that on the posting, judge?
>> yes, ma'am.
>> make sure we haven't done it already.
>> I'll have to go back and look.
we may have already done it when we talked about this initially.
if we haven't, we'll certainly bring it back.
>> okay.
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, March 9, 2010 2:53 PM
