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Welcome

CFRTF Special Meeting

Prioritization Framework

February 8, 2022 | 5:30-7:30pm

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TIMELINE

LAST WEEK

Ad Hoc Committee developed recommendations for full Task force

TODAY

Voting on final recommendations to send to the County

THIS FRIDAY

Send recommendation letter to OCA and HCFCD

Prioritize what we can accomplish in this timeframe to provide insightful recommendations to the County

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AGENDA

  • Overview of Process to Date and Four Questions
  • Public Comment
  • Committee Findings and Task Force Discussion
  • Wrap Up

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FINANCIAL SITUATION

Partnership Gap �$1.3B

Flood Bond $2.5B

Expected partnership funding

$2.5B

Flood Bond $2.5B

Committed partnership funding

$1.2B

Gap $100M

Flood Bond $2.5B

Committed partnership funding

$1.57B

Flood Resilience Trust $833M

AUGUST 2018

MARCH 2021

JANUARY 2022

To be allocated by the 2022 revised prioritization framework

Grants being pursued and lobbying for HUD-GLO funds

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PRIORITIZATION FRAMEWORK

2018 Flood Bond Projects in need of partner funds

Flood

Resilience

Trust

Prioritization Framework �is utilized to allocate Flood Resilience Trust funding

ALL 2018 Flood Bond projects WILL be completed

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WHAT PROJECTS ARE BENEFITED BY THE RESILIENCE TRUST?

Gap $100M

Flood Bond $2.5B

Committed partnership funding

$1.567B

Flood Resilience Trust $833M

JANUARY 2022

53 projects out of 152

PROJECT PHASE

Feasibility

Preliminary Engineering

Design

Construction

WATERSHEDS

PROJECTS WITH PARTNERSHIP GAP

Greens Bayou

Halls Bayou

San Jacinto River

Sims Bayou

Addicks Reservoir

White Oak Bayou

Clear Creek

Brays Bayou

Armand Bayou

Buffalo Bayou

Spring Creek

Little Cypress Creek

Cypress Creek

Galveston Bay

Jackson Bayou

SVI SCORE PER

PARTNERSHIP GAP

no trend

Before we dig into Question 1….

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PROPOSED REVISIONS

Benefits

Efficiency =

Cost of Project - Committed Partner Funding

Structures benefitted

What about projects without structures?

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FOUR QUESTIONS

PARTNERSHIP FUNDING

Include committed partnership funding as a factor in the Benefit Efficiency metric

OR

Don’t include committed partnership funding in the Benefit Efficiency metric

PEOPLE VS. STRUCTURES

Use number of structures to measure people benefited

OR

Use a new formula to measure the number of people benefited

ASSIGNED VALUES

Keep the values as proposed

OR

Request alternate values

LEVEL OF SERVICE

Use FEMA claims and wet carpet counts since 1977 to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

OR

Request a new metric to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

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FOUR QUESTIONS | KEY TAKEAWAYS

PARTNERSHIP FUNDING

Include committed partnership funding as a factor in the Benefit Efficiency metric

OR

Don’t include committed partnership funding in the Benefit Efficiency metric

PEOPLE VS. STRUCTURES

Use number of structures to measure people benefited

OR

Use a new formula to measure the number of people benefited

ASSIGNED VALUES

Keep the values as proposed

OR

Request alternate values

LEVEL OF SERVICE

Use FEMA claims and wet carpet counts since 1977 to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

OR

Request a new metric to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

Counting people instead of structures could provide some finer grained differences, BUT the three big variables (project cost, committed partnership funding, structures) combine to make the impact of using people less definitive

Primarily a decision of centering people over structures

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PARTNERSHIP FUNDING

Include committed partnership funding as a factor in the Benefit Efficiency metric

OR

Don’t include committed partnership funding in the Benefit Efficiency metric

PEOPLE VS. STRUCTURES

Use number of structures to measure people benefited

OR

Use a new formula to measure the number of people benefited

ASSIGNED VALUES

Keep the values as proposed

OR

Request alternate values

LEVEL OF SERVICE

Use FEMA claims and wet carpet counts since 1977 to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

OR

Request a new metric to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

FOUR QUESTIONS | KEY TAKEAWAYS

Projects with BIG amounts of committed partner funds do “move up” closer to the front of the line

Including committed funding matters if it’s a BIG contribution

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PARTNERSHIP FUNDING

Include committed partnership funding as a factor in the Benefit Efficiency metric

OR

Don’t include committed partnership funding in the Benefit Efficiency metric

PEOPLE VS. STRUCTURES

Use number of structures to measure people benefited

OR

Use a new formula to measure the number of people benefited

ASSIGNED VALUES

Keep the values as proposed

OR

Request alternate values

LEVEL OF SERVICE

Use FEMA claims and wet carpet counts since 1977 to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

OR

Request a new metric to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

FOUR QUESTIONS | KEY TAKEAWAYS

Could overvalue operations and maintenance projects over capital projects

Looks to balance projects that benefit lots of people with projects that benefit overall resilience goals

Prioritizes capital projects

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PARTNERSHIP FUNDING

Include committed partnership funding as a factor in the Benefit Efficiency metric

OR

Don’t include committed partnership funding in the Benefit Efficiency metric

PEOPLE VS. STRUCTURES

Use number of structures to measure people benefited

OR

Use a new formula to measure the number of people benefited

ASSIGNED VALUES

Keep the values as proposed

OR

Request alternate values

LEVEL OF SERVICE

Use FEMA claims, wet carpet counts, and permit requests since 1977 to be able to compare subdivision drainage level of service with channel/detention projects level of service

OR

Request a new metric to measure level of service

FOUR QUESTIONS | KEY TAKEAWAYS

Combines several sources of data to give a proxy for the level of service that an area has

While there can be problems with the data, there is not a more accurate data source currently available

Like all data sets, it likely is an undercount of impacts

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PUBLIC COMMENT

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PUBLIC COMMENT

PARTNERSHIP FUNDING

Include committed partnership funding as a factor in the Benefit Efficiency metric

OR

Don’t include committed partnership funding in the Benefit Efficiency metric

PEOPLE VS. STRUCTURES

Use number of structures to measure people benefited

OR

Use a new formula to measure the number of people benefited

ASSIGNED VALUES

Keep the values as proposed

OR

Request alternate values

LEVEL OF SERVICE

Use FEMA claims and wet carpet counts since 1977 to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

OR

Request a new metric to measure level of service for subdivision drainage

xx

Support reducing importance of partnership funding

Support counting people instead of structures

Support prioritizing locally- controlled funds

Preservation projects should be competitive with projects with structures

Support wetland mitigation not being included, or ranked low

Need for comprehensive plan

Natural channel design should be used only on channels that were previously engineered

Interested in using census or HCAD data

Request regular re-evaluation of the framework to assess whether it’s doing what was intended

Need for suite of tools to assess prioritization of projects going forward

Want to confirm that this is not about moving bond money from the projects where it was intended

No comments

Could potentially only use that factor in a go/no-go scenario

Support for capturing benefits for everyone in the structure, not just the first floor

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Q1: USING PEOPLE INSTEAD OF STRUCTURES

OPTIONS

Use number of structures to measure people benefited

Use a new formula to measure the number of people benefited

OPTION 1

OPTION 2

PROPOSED RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommend using a new formula to measure the number of people benefited

  • Request that the formula capture benefits for all people—first and upper floors
  • Request using the finest grain & most recent data possible to capture the number of people most accurately
  • Request making the formula as simple as possible, with the fewest number of assumptions

Recommend centering people over structures

  • Request changing the name of the efficiency metric to “Project Efficiency”

Direct vs. Partial Benefits are TBD

VOTE COUNT

People

Yes-13

No-0

Straight Population over partial Benefits

Yes-13

No--0

Can we include impacts to non-residential but essential structures?

Added complexity of critical facility structures + people may not be needed to allocate funding

Note: schools, grocery stores, water pump, hospitals seen as critical

Simplicity is preferred when it comes to allocating flood resilience funds

MB suggests total population (don’t distinguish)

Other tools needed for Beyond the Bond projects & at multiple stages of projects

Be consistent w/ data and use most recent data

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Q2: INCLUDING COMMITTED PARTNERSHIP FUNDING

OPTIONS

Include committed partnership funding

Don’t include committed partnership funding

OPTION 1

OPTION 2

PROPOSED RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommend NOT including Committed Partnership Funding in the formula

  • Request that the County strongly pursue as much partnership funding as possible until all projects are completed.

Include minority view point:

  • Don’t want to leave it out because we don’t want to disincentivize pursuit of partnership funding

At this stage, it makes sense to include partnership to tell us how efficient this project is

VOTE COUNT

Yes-11

No- 2

Don’t want to further disinvest in Greens Bayou

Dont include

Need tools that help us in multiple stages of project creation, design, etc.

If 1 rule for all: don’t include

If 2018 BOND: don’t include

Want to be grounded in data when discussing disinvestment

Want assurance that we will still PURSUE partnership funding

More investment doesn’t mean higher LOS - FMBI will help us get there

Need to also consider drainage infrastructure at street level

All projects will be funded - so don’t include to allocate resilience trust

Concern that we currently rely a lot on partnership funding so want to keep it

Could we consider- have to pursue partnership for X amt of time?

Future

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Q3: ASSIGNED VALUES FOR PROJECTS W/O STRUCTURES

OPTIONS

Keep the values as proposed

Use alternative values

OPTION 1

OPTION 2

PROPOSED RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommend keeping assigned values for Floodplain Preservation and Investigation

Recommend changing some values to prioritize projects that go beyond operations and maintenance.

  • Request that Wetland Mitigation Bank be scored at a 1
  • Request that Stabilization projects as maintenance stay scored at a 1
  • Request adding a Natural Channel Design category, to be scored at a 6

For “beyond the bond” projects, recommend building Operations and Maintenance costs into the District budget, rather than listing as separate projects. Ensure that this doesn’t create an O&M budget deficiency.

Request that the County clarify their goals regarding flood risk reduction and nature-based solutions.

Request that the County start to identify the funding sources for the $60B total price tag

Where does a field that can flood occasionally stand? It would be detention basin and reduce flooding for people

  • Stabilization or restoration or rehabilitation projects = 1
  • Investigation or study type projects = 2
  • Environmental Wetland Mitigation Bank Projects = 6
  • Floodplain preservation projects = 7

VOTE COUNT

Yes- 13

No-0

Does this create deficiency with O&M? We’re here b/c we’ve had that in the past

Remember: while $5B is a start we need $60B for our long-term resilience. Need to ID funding for this

Long-term: for investigation we need to study projects and their efficacy so we can make decisions based off those metrics

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Q4: LEVEL OF SERVICE

OPTIONS

Use FEMA claims/wet carpet counts/permit requests since 1977 to measure level of service

Request a new metric to measure level of service

OPTION 1

OPTION 2

PROPOSED RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommend using the blended data set of FEMA claims/wet carpet counts/permit requests, and other documented instances of flooding to measure the extent and frequency of damage.

  • Recognize issues and flaws in the data and likelihood of undercounts.
  • Recommend not naming “LOS”, use a name that captures the apple to apple comparison

Recommend a data starting point that is more recent than 1977.

  • Consider all the data, but use the shortest period of record starting from today, in order to incorporate most accurate counts from all data sources

‘Frequency of flooding’ may better capture what we are trying to compare

VOTE COUNT

Yes-

13

No-

More recent data- accounts for more development (last 20 years) and better data

Even if the data goes back to 1977- we can use more recent subsets

What is the definition of level of service?

Concerns that people don’t even apply to FEMA and trust more in local sources → undercounting

There is reason to consider historical data sets

Future: Consider the previous investments with the FMBI : )

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KEY QUESTIONS GOING FORWARD

EQUITABLE RESILIENCE

Centering people

COUNTYWIDE RESILIENCE

Full definition of “benefit”

Historical inequities

Project phases

Capturing benefits to critical infrastructure

MORE TOOLS for evaluating future projects

45% weight of the Benefit Efficiency formula?

SVI should be weighted higher?

Transparency of projects and the tool with community

How to evaluate studies as we go

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END of SHOW

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BENEFITS EFFICIENCY - 45%

BENEFITS EFFICIENCY

Project Cost - Committed Partner Funds

Structures benefitted

in a 1% event

=

=

HCFCD Cost

Structures benefitted

in a 1% event

=

$ per structure benefitted

Example

1,000 structures

=

$200 M - $100M

=

$ 1,000 per structure benefitted

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Q1: USING PEOPLE INSTEAD OF STRUCTURES

ONE POTENTIAL PROPOSED FORMULA

DIRECT BENEFITS

first floor only

PARTIAL BENEFITS

upper floors

PEOPLE BENEFITTED

1 Structure = 2.8 people per household

+

=

1 tax account = 2.8 people

X

Total number of accounts in entire building

-

Number of people on the first floor

=

=

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FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS

TO GIVE TO THE COUNTY

RECOMMENDATION: Use a new formula to measure the number of people benefited.

  • Change wording to “Project Efficiency”
  • Use finest grain possible to capture # of people
  • Make as simple as possible, fewer assumptions

RECOMMENDATION:

RECOMMENDATION:

Wetland mitigation should not be scored if part of the O&M work (built into the projects)

“Stabilization”—if “natural channel design”, not maintenance—goes to 6

RECOMMENDATION: Make sure the metric takes into account vulnerable populations and is more current

WHY: FEMA data is charged and problematic

This framework should be used for the 2018 Flood Bond projects still in need of partner funding.

The framework would need further revision before it is to prioritize for future projects and working “beyond the bond.”

We need County to establish resilience goals to we can strike a balance in this tool

PEOPLE OR STRUCTURES

PARTNERSHIP FUNDING

ASSIGNED VALUES

LEVEL OF SERVICE

FRAMING OR OTHERS?