Lodi Improvement Committee to review grant funding plan

The Lodi Improvement Committee will be reviewing the 2018-19 annual action plan for Community Development Block Grant funding during its meeting on Tuesday at 6 p.m.

According to a report prepared by CDBG program specialist Patrice Clemons, the city receives an annual allocation of funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and prepares a plan that identifies the services and projects to fund that will meet the goals mapped out in the city’s five-year consolidated plan.

This year, the committee was involved in the scoring process of the CDBG applications in an effort to give the public more input on who receives funding.

“I appreciate the opportunity to work on it. I think it’s a nice role for the committee to take on,” committee member Doug Bojack said. “We just provide the draft scoring or suggested scoring to the city council who makes the final determination. It’s a good way to get input from another subset of people from the city.”

The committee held a workshop on Feb. 13 to gather public comment on community needs for the 2018-19 grant year. City staff and the committee prepared draft scores for applications at the March 5 meeting and finalized the scoring at the March 13 meeting. The scores were relayed to city staff who also scored applications and the results were used to develop the draft action plan.

“This year we had more requests than we could fund but you weigh different aspects of the different applications,” Bojack said, explaining the challenge of trying to come to a fair decision when scoring the applications. “If the applications you get in are from continuing programs where they’ve been funded in the past or there is overlap between the types of populations served in the city, we have to consider how we can reduce the overlap and spread the funding to provide a greater variety of services.”

When scoring applications, Bojack said he considered the applicants that demonstrated the most need and the impact per dollar allocated to that particular application.

The city anticipates receiving $630,000 in CDBG funding for the 201819 grant year. Per city council policy, 60 percent of the funding is to be allocated to city-sponsored projects while the remaining 40 percent is allocated to community-based organization capital projects, Clemons said. Citysponsored projects that are proposed for the next funding cycle include graffiti abatement, alley improvement, and Blakely Park pool improvements.

According to Clemons, HUD limits funding allocated to public service activities to 15 percent of the total grant award. The cap for public service funding is $94,500 for the 2018-19 grant year. Graffiti abatement is slated to receive $30,000, leaving $64,500 for all other public service activities seeking funding. Five community organizations requested a total of $108,726 in funding which exceeds the amount of funding available. The Community Partnership for Families requested $50,000 while the Emergency Food Bank requested $10,000. The LOEL Senior Center and Second Harvest both requested $10,000 each and Ready to Work requested $28,726. In the draft action plan $17,000 is allocated to Ready to Work, $7,000 was allocated to the Emergency Food Bank, $6,000 was allocated to Second Harvest Food Bank, $6,500 was allocated to the Loel Center and $28,000 allocated to the Community Partnership for Families.

Per HUD, only 20 percent of CDBG funding can go towards planning and administrative related activities, Clemon said. In the past, the city has transferred fair housing activities from public services to planning and administrative in order to free up more public service dollars, she said. City staff recommended an allocation of $20,000 for fair housing activities. There were two applicants seeking funding for fair housing activities. The California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) requested $8,579 and San Joaquin Fair Housing requested $15,750. In the draft action plan $7,000 is allocated to the CRLA and $13, 000 is allocated to San Joaquin Fair Housing.

Community-based organization capital projects are expected to receive an allocation of $201,600 but after the proposed public service projects $137,100 remains. A total of $16,000 has been requested, including $6,000 for the Disability Resource Agency for Independent Living (DRAIL) Assistive Technology project, and $10,000 for the Grace and Mercy Foundation’s American with Disabilities Act (ADA) Improvements project, Clemons said. In the draft action plan $11,000 is allocated to Grace and Mercy project and $6,000 is allocated to DRAIL’s project.

“This is a draft. Whatever we are considering right now is not final,” Clemons said. “These are being completed by the council and we are still gathering public input.”

According to Clemons, the city has not received its allocation from HUD, so the allocation amounts are based off of the amount the city received last year and are subject to change once the allocation is received. The city anticipates receiving the funds by the summer.

Last year there was controversy after grant funding for the One-Eighty Teen Center’s facade improvements was included in the draft action plan. Some citizens voiced concerns that because the center was a faith-based organization it was against HUD regulations for it to receive funding. However, former Neighborhood Services Manager Joseph Wood explained that faith-based organizations are no longer required to form a separate secular organization to receive HUD funds. An organization that engages in explicitly religious activities must allocate its cost so that HUD funds are used only for eligible HUD activities, he said. HUD funds may not be used to acquire or improve principal places of worship, Wood said. Ultimately, the Lodi City Council approved the allocation to the center with conditions.

Lodi’s David Diskin, who spoke out against funding the teen center, is pleased that this time around the public has an opportunity to give more input on how CDBG funding should be dispersed.

“I think that any time that you have a group of people reviewing a grant or application over a single person, I think that definitely helps. My hope is that when the committee looks at the applications that come in, they might do more research than what has been done in the past about the organizations that are applying and try and consider how the potential funding can be used to benefit the entire community rather than a subset of the community.”