Fed dollars for local projects in doubt
Trump wants to cut funds as groups pitch to fund area health, early childhood care centers
An early childhood education center in Santa Fe and a community health center in the town of Edgewood are vying for up to $750,000 from a federal grant program that’s on the chopping block in a White House spending plan.
Officials with the United Way of Santa Fe County and First Choice Community Healthcare on Tuesday pitched their proposals to the five-member County Commission, responsible for selecting one project for its application for funding under the Community Development Block Grant program. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has distributed the grants since 1974 as a way to help communities address poverty and urban blight, and improve public infrastructure.
Commissioners are scheduled to select one of the local proposals next month and then submit an application to the state Department of Finance and Administration, which will dole out some $9 million from the federal program to projects across New Mexico.
But it’s unclear if the funds will be available. Republican President Donald Trump is proposing to eliminate the $3 billion grant program. A Republican-controlled Congress must approve such cuts.
“It’s a little scary to contemplate the potential cuts that the president and others have proposed,” Santa Fe County Commissioner Robert Anaya said during Tuesday’s meeting. Previous county projects funded by the grants include a water project in Glorieta, he said, and a La Familia Medical Center clinic on Santa Fe’s south side.
Krista Kelley, a consultant for First Choice Community Healthcare, told commissioners that a new $7.5 million, 22,000-square-foot facility would create 85 jobs — with about $5.6 million in annual salaries — in the community of Edgewood, a small town east of the Sandia Mountains along Interstate 40.
Funding from the Community Development Block Grant program would provide exam rooms, dental laboratories, specialty services and behavioral health care, she said.
The nonprofit First Choice Community Healthcare would run the facility, but the building would be owned by Santa Fe County, Kelley said. Voters in the county approved the issuance of up to $5 million in general obligation bonds in November for such health centers, money that First Choice plans to use, Kelley said. Officials hope to begin building within the next year.
The new facility would provide services on a sliding-fee scale, she said, and also will offer after-hours care.
Katherine Freeman, president and CEO of the United Way of Santa Fe County, told commissioners that her group is seeking the federal grant funds to complete the purchase and remodeling of the old Kaune Elementary
School building “to transform it into an early childhood center serving anybody in Santa Fe County.”
The center would offer quality early childhood programs for low- and moderate-income families, she said, which are not readily available in the area now. An adult learning center to provide professional development for child care workers also would be housed at the facility, in partnership with Santa Fe Community College. The project would create a minimum of 45 new jobs in the county, Freeman said.
The renovation project is expected to cost up to $7 million, she said. So far, United Way has raised $3.3 million.
In the next few months, officials will begin construction on a wing of the old elementary school to provide services for infants and toddlers and their parents.
“It’s in a really central location for anybody in Santa Fe County,” Freeman said of the old elementary school, near the intersection of Cerrillos Road and Baca Street, which closed in 2010.