City to amend CDBG action plan for additional funds for COVID response
During their June 16 meeting, City Commissioners will be asked to set a public hearing for July 7 regarding an amendment to the annual action plan for the city’s Community Development Block Grant and Home Investment Partnership programs.
Those programs are through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and each year, the city adopts funding priorities and an annual action plan for how it will spend the allocation. That plan is due to HUD every summer.
Staff is recommending to amend the annual action plan to identify funding priorities for a the new allocation of CDBG funds through the CARES Act that must be used “to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus.”
HUD notified the city in the spring that its CARES Act allocation for CDBG funds will be an additional $475,515.
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Before those new funds can be made available for potential applicants, the plan needs to be amended to identify local funding priorities, with an expedited time period for public comment. That requires staff to also amend the city’s citizen participation plan.
Both would be submitted for public comment at the July 7 commission meeting.
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If the amended plans are adopted by the commission, staff anticipates that the CARES Act CBDG funds would be available for potential grant applications by late summer or early fall.
If the commission doesn’t set the public hearing for the amended plan the city wouldn’t be able to allocate the additional funds to local agencies.
The city’s regular allocation of CDBG dollars has less than $30,000 remaining in unprogrammed funds as it nears the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
