Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 18
18 is to consider and take request from the capital area council of governments, capcog, to execute a memorandum of understanding regarding the implementation of the centers concept related to sustainable communities regional planning grant received by capcog from the u.s.
department of housing and urban development.
good afternoon.
>> good afternoon.
with me is randi nicholson.
he's been keeping tabs on this h.u.d.
grant work that capcog has taken on.
and if you have a few minutes I would like for him to kind of lay out what the grant is about and what the expectations are.
I could tell you that as far as this mad cow goes this memorandum of understanding goes, it's essentially a charter of sorts that we agree to work and cooperate with the folks from capcog.
it does not commit us to any funding or any resources other than just reviewing documents that are appropriate for us to review in a timely manner.
but randy will lay this out for you.
>> please do.
>> good afternoon, judge.
randi nicholson, tnr planning.
I think the essence of this as it relates to taking steps with the campo plan, with the campo 2035 and a concept for centers, this is just one tool that's been identified by regional consortium to start to really move forward somehow the idea of centers.
and in that concept, what they've laid out in this memorandum of agreement relates to the h.u.d.
grant that they received back in January of this year.
the h.u.d.
grant is for $3.7 million and it pretty well reflects the fact that h.u.d., e.p.a.
and the d.o.t.
are moving toward a synergized funding of their grant systems. So as you -- earlier as you spoke about cdbg grants, for example, there's -- this kind of foreshadows the fact that all the federal grants that the money shrinks, they're looking to get more money, more bucks, more bite for their money.
and I think this grant for certain will I think go a long ways towards the centers concept of h.u.d., e.p.a.
and d.o.t.
focusing on some of the centers.
I think this allows us to get ahead of the game.
there's 64 or 67 communities in the united states that were approve for this grant.
and so I think it's great that the city of Austin and the regional area of Austin is in this pipeline.
so this agreement basically says that it's kind of a collaboration agreement saying that we agree with the centers concept and we also agree to take the next step forward and try to figure out how to make that really a liveable concept and put some boots on the ground out there and make it work.
and one of the concepts behind that is kind of a three-pronged approach with this consortium.
it has a demonstrations sites project within the grant.
this is not money that's coming to the centers, one of the 37 centers.
actually, they help to fund about five out of the 37 centers, one in each county, and of different sizes.
and so there's a demonstration site selection process that will happen this fall and the next two years after that those five demonstration sites will go through an extensive planning process that is funded through the h.u.d.
grants.
so the individual centers themselves don't receive funding, but they receive a significant amount of expertise from the planning and analytical tools process to help understand how to make centers reality.
so at the end of the day, the analysis, the demo sites is also dplikable.
it's supposed to be scalable so that eventually all 11 sites will benefit from this process.
so it's a two-year process to set up a model and a property prototype that allows all the other communities to take advantage of that information that they've developed.
h.u.d., of course, even hopes that it's such a quality level that they will be able to use it in other communities throughout the country.
but our focus obviously is within the campo's 37 centers.
>> any questions?
>> I have one question.
as far as the second activity, the developing as an analytics cool, this is probably the big bang for us.
based on the backup I couldn't tell whether we were already imbedded as part of the activities work group on that prong.
>> no, we are not.
>> are we working towards that?
that seems to be the real cherry in this collaboration for us.
>> that one is probably -- that one is a year and a half away.
before the model starts to gel with all the activity centers.
we'll definitely track that as we go along.
I have to admit to you that that's a huge i.t.
type of investment that their looking at that.
i.t.
is not my strong point, so I will be looking for other resources in the county when we get to that level.
>> and that's the one that the partners, ibm and u.t., are working most actively on.
>> yes.
>> as ex-officio members.
I would just ask -- I'm absolutely in favor of this collaboration.
I would just ask from the up front that we really strive toward being as involved in that portion of the activity as possible because, as we've often noted before, municipalities can do everything possible in their power, but -- and it will still have very little impact on us in the e.t.j.
and incorporated areas.
I would like that analytical tool to really be robust for e.t.j.
and unincorporated centers development as well.
>> I think in that light we should certainly encourage all our municipalities within our -- in Travis County to look at applying for the grant.
I mean, that's one of the efforts here that we could do as a court to express upon the -- all the different activity centers our desire to support to get them active in the grant process.
because it is a competitive grant process and again only five out of the 37 will be awarded that initial --
>> I would like to see an area of dirt that doesn't have the benefits of municipal home rule regulatory to see if centers can be developed in an area that doesn't have that kind of municipal might.
>> there are five centers and five counties.
>> that's their goal is to hopefully have applications that will make it --
>> with tools that can be used anywhere in the capcog region afterwards.
>> yes, sir.
that's correct.
>> so I don't know that I would -- 22 cities in Travis County.
or 23.
and the city of Austin is one of the main partners.
there will be a center, a test center in Austin, I guarantee you that.
>> yes, sir.
I would agree that's probably true.
>> but not all those 22 centers are on the campo centers plan, so they wouldn't qualify.
>> my whole point is that Austin for Travis County.
and in fairness, I would think that the grant recipients will try to spread the good tool throughout the region, especially the counties covered by the grant.
>> yes, sir.
>> so I think that what we ought to do is learn as much as we can from whatever is in Travis County so we can help take that to other cities in the county that want to participate thereafter because thereafter whatever your relationship is with capcog or campo, you'll still be able to use the tools that u.t., a&m and I think the city of Austin are the main formulators of anyway.
>> and I wasn't meaning to suggest that we should skew the Travis County project to an unincorporated area.
I'm suggesting that actually a project select understand bastrop that's not inside the city of bastrop could perhaps be more instructive to us as a county.
the mueller development, for instance, was selected inside Travis County.
not that I don't love the mueller development.
>> we can't know as much as we can about the tools that are supposed to come from this.
any more discussion of the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
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