County keeps grant choice procedure

At least some members of the Yuma County Board of Supervisors resisted an effort by county staff to revamp the way projects are chosen to apply for federal Community Development Block Grants, after it took an hour and four attempts for them to settle on a ranking for them last year.

Since then the board has seen its biggest turnover in decades, with three new board members out of five. The two veterans, particularly Board Chairman Tony Reyes, said they’re fine with the way things are,

reviewing applications from local nonprofits and county agencies without providing much information about what their funding priorities might be.

Reyes said cities within the county “steer the CDBG money to what they want to see, not necessarily to what the community might need but what they’d like to see. I know because I did it, when I was mayor (of San Luis),” he said. “In the county we normally went at it the opposite way. We normally had public hearings and had all these groups meet together, give you their thoughts on what they need and then we went through that process, where projects were chosen and then the board got involved.”

County staff was recommending that the board set its funding priorities, for inclusion in a rating sheet that would score all submitted proposals. Then, after a public hearing at which the competing proposals are presented, the county administrator would submit the projects, along with her recommendations according to the rating sheet, for a second public hearing when the board makes its decisions.

Nancy Ngai, Yuma County community planning coordinator, said the board’s funding priorities would still be one of several criteria used to rank the proposals, not the only one.

“It’s not that we’re limiting your options or ability to fund projects that are needed and crucial to the community. It’s just that since there’s no planning strategy behind how we fund projects, that we’re trying to streamline it a little more so it provides more of a consistent policy,” she said.

Supervisor Russell McCloud, the other board veteran, said the new process would give the board less flexibility in the end. “I think it’s going to make it harder on the board when you bring in ranked things and all of a sudden, we say, ‘I want to do No. 6.’ And then you have to justify why you’re not doing numbers one, two and three.”

Newer arrival Martin Porchas, who stepped down as mayor of Somerton to run for the District 1 Board of Supervisors seat last year, said officials can help ensure the federal funding benefits the greatest number of people.

“When we say community, are we talking about the whole community? Or are we talking about — Amberly’s Place, furniture and equipment,” he said, referring to a recently CDBGfunded example presented by staff. “There’s only certain people that need that. What I would like to see is that we look into our districts, and see which areas are really hurting concerning roads, and streets. We’re looking into major streets, or unpaved, or at least sidewalks, something that is needed where the county can put up, that will benefit. Any street in our county, everybody uses it.”

Reyes noted that CDBG funds can be used only in areas with high concentrations of low- to moderateincome residents, and the county has tended not to use them for road improvements because under state law, it cannot use its own General Fund money to contribute to social services agencies dealing with housing, domestic violence or other issues.

CDBG funding is distributed by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development through annual grants. Federal CDBG priorities are benefiting low- to moderate-income residents, eliminating slum or blight or addressing an urgent or emergency community need.

Eighty-five percent of money given to the county is distributed by the state to the local level through the state’s councils of governments, with Yuma falling under the Western Arizona Council of Governments (WACOG).

The other 15 percent comes through “State Special Projects,” a competitive process. This is how the proposed projects being considered by the board could potentially be funded. Grants for colonias, or areas with substandard housing and lacking basic road or sewer systems, are funded from a different source.

In Yuma County, proposals are typically ranked by the board in order of priority, so when whatever amount of CDBG funding the county is going to get becomes available the money can be divided or shifted from one project to another, if one with a higher priority turns out not to be a good option anymore. Last year, the board ended up approving a list ranking only three of the six proposals under consideration.

According to the county’s adopted budget, it received and spent $317,000 in CDBG funding over the 2016-17 fiscal year, and forecasts it will receive $932,300 in the current 2017-18 fiscal year. This cycle’s competitive State Special Projects grants are expected to be awarded by the Arizona Department of Housing in early 2019. Also Monday, the board: • Accepted the findings of two reports from floodwater engineering consultant James Davey for Somerton and Wellton, which recommends flood control projects costing an estimated $3.5 million for Somerton and $4.8 million for Wellton. The Wellton plan includes a project channelizing part of Coyote Wash at a cost of $1.4 million, which would reduce the flooding risk for many homes along the wash enough for owners not to need flood insurance.

• The board authorized engineers to begin designing the near-term priority projects. Funding will come from the Yuma County Flood Control District, funded by a 28-cent countywide property tax, and will dictate when any work is done.

• Approved financing improvements for various county buildings through two debt packages purchased by banks: $2.5 million for work at the Yuma County Jail complex at 2.37 percent interest, and $2.7 million for the health district, juvenile justice, main administration, sheriff’s and other buildings.

• Discussed the board’s positions on a number of state Legislature proposals up for consideration during the County Supervisors Associations’ Legislative Summit Oct. 24-25.

• Approved a $124,500 contract with DPE Construction to pave an unpaved portion of Avenue 14E between Susanne de Fortuna Drive and 28th Street.

• Authorized staff to begin designing two traffic signal projects, at Avenue A/County 15th Street and US95/Engler Avenue, as well as to remove the northbound stop sign at Avenue I at County 18th Street.