Department: County Administration
Department Head/Elected Official: David Berry
Regular or Supplemental RCA: Regular RCA
Type of Request: Discussion Item
Project ID (if applicable): N/A
Vendor/Entity Legal Name (if applicable): N/A
MWDBE Contracted Goal (if applicable): N/A
MWDBE Current Participation (if applicable): N/A
Justification for 0% MWDBE Participation Goal: N/A - Goal not applicable to request
Request Summary (Agenda Caption):
title
Request for discussion and possible action (i) to allocate the 2022 road and parks bonds and (ii) to adopt procedures and program eligibility criteria necessary to implement the 2022 road and parks bond.
end
Background and Discussion:
In November 2022, 69% of Harris County voters approved a $900 million road and drainage bond, while 63% of Harris County voters approved a $200 million parks bond.
The road and drainage bonds included several programs designed to dedicate bond capacity to specific goals and to implement the "worst first" approach in Commissioner Court's adopted bond order. These programs are: road drainage ($200M); partnerships ($200M), provided that entities without the financial means to partner will be allowed to participate in this program; road rehabilitation ($100M); Vision Zero ($50M) and multimodal transportation ($50M).
Allocation
To implement the 2022 bonds, the authorization needs to be allocated across the four precincts. County staff recommends that Commissioners Court consider a single, overall allocation formula rather than a program by program allocation. Staff further recommends that Commissioners Court consider the following factors in the allocation:
(1) Population, resulting in 25% allocation to each precinct;
(2) The concentration of high Social Vulnerability Index persons. SVI is used by the federal government to measure the effects of external stress on a population. Staff believes that SVI is a useful metric to gauge a community's vulnerability to flooding and natural disasters; need to access multiple forms of transportation; and overall quality of the built environment. The breakdown of high SVI population (greater that 75 on a scale of 1-100) by precinct is shown below:
|
|
PCT1 |
PCT2 |
PCT3 |
PCT4 |
|
Population SVI>75 |
425,532 |
533,289 |
56,687 |
288,736 |
Program Eligibility
Attachment 1 provides the eligibility criteria for each program in the 2022 road and parks bond, as prepared by the Office of the County Engineer. Staff requests that Commissioners Court adopt these criteria or provide guidance for modifications.
Bond Administration
Staff requests that initially 10% of bond proceeds be reserved for program management. This allows for the use of County engineering staff, compliance monitors, MWBE staff, attorneys, purchasing agents, and contract staff augmentation. This allocation from the bond can be decreased should other funding sources become available. The allocation is in line with industry standards for capital project management cost. In the past, Harris County has struggled to invest all its bond authorization in a timely fashion. Core administrative functions, including attorney, procurement, and project managers, have had extremely high workloads, resulting in project delays.
Transparency
County staff requests direction from Commissioners Court to develop an interactive dashboard displaying completed and under construction projects from the 2022. This dashboard can link to precinct webpages and maps. Precinct 2 has a dashboard which can inform staff's effort (<https://www.hcp2.com/projectsdashboard/>), as does the City of Dallas: <https://dallascityhall.com/departments/public-works/dallasbondprogram/Pages/default.aspx>.
The Office of Management and Budget requests authorization to work with the Auditor and other relevant County departments to track spending by each bond program.
Expected Impact:
The above proposal will support transparent, equitable and efficient implementation of the bond.
Alternative Options:
Commissioners Court can modify the allocation, program eligibility and other procedures. These items must be defined before the bond can be implemented.
Alignment with Goal(s):
_ Justice and Safety
_ Economic Opportunity
_ Housing
_ Public Health
X Transportation
_ Flooding
X Environment
_ Governance and Customer Service
Prior Court Action (if any):
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Date |
Agenda Item # |
Action Taken |
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Location:
Address (if applicable): N/A
Precinct(s): Countywide
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Fiscal and Personnel Summary |
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Service Name |
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FY 23 |
FY 24 |
Next 3 FYs |
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Incremental Expenditures (do NOT write values in thousands or millions) |
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Labor Expenditures |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Non-Labor Expenditures |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Total Incremental Expenditures |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Funding Sources (do NOT write values in thousands or millions) |
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Existing Budget |
|
Choose an item. |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Choose an item. |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Choose an item. |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Total Current Budget |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Additional Budget Requested |
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Choose an item. |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Choose an item. |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Choose an item. |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Total Additional Budget Requested |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Total Funding Sources |
$ |
$ |
$ |
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Personnel (Fill out section only if requesting new PCNs) |
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Current Position Count for Service |
- |
- |
- |
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Additional Positions Requested |
- |
- |
- |
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Total Personnel |
- |
- |
- |
Anticipated Court Date: January 31, 2022
Anticipated Implementation Date (if different from Court date): N/A
Emergency/Disaster Recovery Note: Not an emergency, disaster, or COVID-19 related item
Contact(s) name, title, department: David Berry, County Administrator, Office of County Administration
Attachments (if applicable): Proposed Program Eligibility Criteria