City explores which streets will qualify for CDBG funding
There are strings to how the City of Warren can spend federal Community Development Block Grant funds.
But officials are working to identify – and bring to fruition – the next series of projects designed to specifically benefit low-to-moderate income people.
A public hearing was held this week to discuss the CDBG process, generally, and the various projects, specifically.
City Planner David Hildebrand said the 2018 federal fiscal year allocation will be just over $296,000 and that a second hearing will be held at the October city council meeting in advance of the November 2 application deadline.
The CDBG pie can be cut into several parts.
Hildebrand said that 70 percent of the funding is allocated into projects which the city usually utilizes to rebuild streets that have residents who are at least 51 percent low/moderate income and 30 percent for slum and blight which is utilized to repay the loan that funded downtown streetscape.
The city can also keep up to 18 percent of the total for administrators purposes but Hildebrand said that they try to keep that at six to eight percent “to put more money into the projects.”
The last two streets completed under CDBG were Franklin St. and a portion of East St.
“For 2016 and 2017 funds, it will be Park Ave. down at the bottom of Madison in that vicinity,” Hildebrand said, indicating that the project will result in the replacement of a retaining wall. “We’ve qualified that in for the 2016 and 2017 money prior to this money.”
He said that project would also include work on Locust St. as staff determined pedestrian to Shurfine and the laundromat to be significant.
Engineering is slated to take place over the winter, Hildebrand explained, with work to “start as soon as the weather breaks. (The) hope is to complete it next construction season. That one is moving along well.”
“The goal is to put the investment into the infrastructure on those streets (as) some incentive for people to make investments in the houses,” Hildebrand said. “That has worked over the years.”
He said funding for 2018 is actually increased over last year.
Where that funding is going to go is still in the works.
“(We are) just looking at some streets now, some of the east side streets – Carver, South, Irvine,” Hildebrand said, indicating no final determination has been made.
Procedurally, he said that staff work with the Public Works Department, who has an ongoing list of the conditions of the city’s streets.
Staff then has to determine which of those streets will fit into the income qualifications.
While state and federal government offices provide Census and income level, Hildebrand said that city staff then have to send an income level survey to each residence in a service area. That often requires knocking as doors as everyone doesn’t respond and the feds “want to have everybody respond.”
The structure of the program, which has been operating for decades, makes it challenging for the city to use CDBG funds on corridor streets – Lexington, Pennsylvania Ave., Madison Ave. – because they won’t qualify under the income guidelines.
“For this program, just the way it is set up and given that we’re not 51 percent low/moderate city-wide, we get pushed, so to speak, to the side streets,” Hildebrand explained.
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