Budget, grant program awaits council

Mayor Mulligan called the public hearing to order.

Doug Adkins, Community Revitalization Director said contrary to blogs on the

internet, he is not declaring the entire city a slum-invited area. He explained the

purpose of this amendment is to expand options and update various program

requirements which have changed since the passage of the 2009 Action Plan. The

basis of the change is not new data. It is ten year old census data. All proposed

activities have to go before the public for a comment period, have to go before the

City Manager, City Council and have to be approved by HUD. Specific amendments

were cited and included:

entire City of Middletown. The current target area is based on income data

from the 2000 census. Based on data provided by HUD, the entire city

qualifies as eligible based on 54% of households city-wide qualify as lowmoderate

income. By going citywide, if projects are desirable, they can go

anywhere in the city. The greatest need may still be where our current target

area is defined. Even with Code Enforcement efforts and maintenance

issues, this amendment would provide benefits citywide to citizens currently

unable to meet criteria for assistance because they don’t live in the current

target area;

and/or repairs of properties in the CDBG area. The State has a similar

program with a similar name which has confused many people. The

recommended name will be VIP (Volunteer Improvements Program). Funds

to assist homeowners are being increased to $60,000 for the current budget

year with the expanded eligible city-wide area, if adopted.

The process will start in the next month or so for a new three-year consolidated

plan. With input from the residents and council, he wants to have the most

flexibility to incorporate the widest range of eligible activity to benefit the greatest

number in Middletown. Also, this is CDBG Funds about $690,000 and does not

include home funds, NSP funds, etc. There are two potential cons. If the

greatest need is determined to be outside the current geographic area, funds can

be diverted outside the current target area to a higher need area. The other con

is this amendment acknowledges that 54% of our citizens now meet the HUD

guidelines for low-moderate income. This proposal tries to open as many options

as possible to adapt to changing conditions as we move forward.

Mr. Schiavone asked if these amendments were based on 2000 census data,

why did it take nine years to go into effect.

Mr. Adkins couldn’t answer that question. He stated since he came on board

several months ago, it has taken him a while to look at the data. The City does

qualify. He was looking for ways to help more people that needed help

legitimately under the guidelines and the data says we can. When new census

data is available, it will change the bar.

Ms. Scott Jones asked several questions including those summarized below. Mr.

Adkins’s responses are in italic:

could help those persons. These changes could help additional people?

$400,000 home can’t step into the process in front of someone who had

Ms. Scott Jones asked for additional time for discussion after the public hearing.

Mr. Mulligan called for proponents. Hearing none, he called for opponents.

not for reading the workbook for tonight’s meeting, he would not have known.

From the materials in the workbook, it is not understandable what all this entails.

Council may also not understand. It’s seems to be about a lot more than

$600,000. This is a change and he has been to Council several times talking

about infrastructure and streets. In the past he has been told you cannot use

CDBG monies for streets. That’s not true. He said he doesn’t see anything in

this modification that shows spending any money on the streets. In years past,

money went unspent and could have been used for streets. Regarding the

statistics of 54% qualifying, one thing that has changed if you look at the number

of Section 8 vouchers from 2000 to last year, they went up significantly. It’s so

complicated. He thought it was about HUD money but it is CDBG money. None

of these monies are for salaries but some transfers go into funds for salaries. At

minimum council should be asking for more information and a better explanation.

He didn’t feel there was enough oversight.

Mr. Mulligan asked for any further opponents. Hearing none, the public hearing

closed at 5:45 p.m. He asked Ms. Scott Jones if she had other questions.

Ms. Scott Jones asked questions including those listed below, and Mr. Adkins’s

responses are in italic:

some concerns about the relationship with the Journal?

Mr. Mulligan stated that was the charter change discussion.

Ms. Scott Jones responded she understood what it was, but in that Charter

change it had something to do with advertising. She just simply wanted

clarification.

Ms. Scott Jones said the 2010 census is coming up, but will take pretty much all

of 2010 for that census data to be completed.

Mr. Adkins stated the three-year plan will most likely be submitted before the

2010 census data is gathered.

Ms. Scott Jones asked if this data could be incorporated into the 2010 plan

without amending the 2009 plan.

Mr. Adkins stated this amendment allows the City to go out with code

enforcement and other things now and also to be ready citywide within the 2010

plan.

Ms. Scott Jones asked again could you incorporate this citywide plan in the 2010

plan without amending the 2009 plan.

Mr. Adkins answered yes you could.

Ms. Ford stated the perception of having 54% percent of the households citywide

qualifying as low to moderate income in of itself might be a bad thing. But, she

was trying to see where the problem was with the request for the amendment.

To her it appeared that staff has found another way to assist more of the

population, and she did not see a problem with that.

Mr. Adkins stated that was correct.

Mr. Becker explained this was on the agenda for a first reading. The second

reading would be the first of October and this wouldn’t go into effect until

November.

Mr. Adkins stated that was correct.

Mr. Becker suggested coming back for the second reading in October with a map

showing the current target area with an overlay map of what is eligible with the

amendment. What he recalls was the City is already 60 to 70% qualified. He’d

like to see that and a quick synopsis of what CDBG can and cannot do.

Ms. Scott Jones addressed Ms. Ford’s comments by stating she really didn’t see

any problem with helping more citizens either, but she feels we owe the citizens

an explanation of why this is happening.

Ms. Ford stated she was not directing her comments to Ms. Scott Jones. She

was addressing comments to friends in cyberspace.

Ms. Scott Jones stated she understood that. She likes as much clarification as

possible. Especially with televised meetings, it gives Council the opportunity to

explain things to the public.

Ms. Gilleland remarked about the public notice. Staff provides the same public

notice as we do for all public hearings. Also, addressing Mr. Presta’s comments

about infrastructure, she stated Mr. Presta is right about infrastructure. He

makes a valid point. In some areas we have not been able to pay for streets with

CDBG funds because they have been areas outside the target area. What Mr.

Adkins has done is included the entire area in the target area and will be able to

utilize some of those funds. We have looked at maintenance of alleys, etc. and

some were outside of the CDBG area and we could not use CDBG funds. The

same goes for parks and playground equipment.

Mr. Becker stated he has been involved during several of these three year plan

processes and is a lengthy process. Before, residents didn’t show much interest

or input. It went through the motions and council approved it. This one might

draw more attention. You can do streets with it and the City has in the past, but

when you take money for streets it takes away from somewhere else. We’re only

talking $690,000.

Ms. Scott Jones stated council is an elected body, elected to speak for the

people whether they come to draw attention to the subject or not. Are we going

to ensure that there is going to be money set aside for the infrastructure?

Infrastructure has been mentioned a couple of times, we know what happened in

the past on past council’s when money was set aside for the streets and things

changed and that money was put into the general fund. That is one of our top

priorities.

Ms. Gilleland stated that would be part of the budgeting process.

Ms. Scott Jones stated she understands that everything is part of the budgeting

process, but why mention it if it’s not going to be. It’s a serious matter that we

need to address. She said she wanted to ensure that it’s part of what would be

delineated for what we’re looking at in the future.

Mr. Adkins responded that he said it could, he didn’t say it would. The

preliminary budget does have some monies set aside for infrastructure

improvements.

Mr. Presta wanted to re-address Council and Ms. Gilleland’s comments

regarding some paving with CDBG funds. He asked what has been paved with

CDBG money.

Ms. Gilleland stated she can’t speak to the past.

Mr. Presta said he thought we were talking about the past. You said in the past

we have paved streets with CDBG money.

Mr. Becker said he thought those statements about past paving were his. He

mentioned there was some street paving projects in the past and some alleys

were paved with CDBG funds. The city used to do that when we received a lot

more money.

Mr. Presta said the City just got an extra ½ million dollars and can’t understand

how alleys would get preference to streets.

Mr. Mulligan stated it was probably a function of what could be paved with the

amount of money we had.

Ms. Wanda Glover wanted to make comments.

Mr. Mulligan stated the public hearing had closed and asked if the comments

could wait until citizen comments.

Ms. Glover responded no, that her comments were pertaining to this topic. She

said she is Chair of the Second Ward Community Council and did not know

about this issue being on the agenda. She was present to speak later on another

topic. She said if the notice was put into the classified section, no one reads

those anyway. Regarding spreading the HUD money over the entire city, the

Second Ward has many alleys that are neglected now and are already in the

target area. It concerns her and she feels the money should be spent on the

sections of the city that need it most. She stated if the money is spread across

the entire city, she fears the Second Ward would be neglected even more.