Welcome folks to this community development block grant uh public hearing. Um we have a just two main agenda items today. And before we get started with that, I'll just give you a little bit of background about what community development block grant is. Uh
this meeting is being recorded so that folks can um watch this in the future and hopefully at least some of you this will be new information. So, the block grant is funds that the city receives via the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, typically on an annual basis. Um, it's
federal funds that are then granted to the states and then granted by the state to smaller communities. Um, uh, they are meant to be used primarily to benefit low and moderate income people and to combat slum and blight. Um, and so the city has been a mini
entitlement of the Commonwealth for a while now, which means that we count on these funds pretty much yearly. They fund a huge range of projects, including public social services, which are subgrantees of the city, so programs that we grant funds to as well. Um our
agenda today is to talk about um a change in scope to one of our projects and a potential new project and then to just give the public a sort of general overview of where the many many projects under this grant um are at this point.
So the first project I wanted to address um is uh a project under the fiscal year 2022 2023 grant. So, we received this uh at the very end of 2023. Um it was a two-year grant because of
the pandemic. So, it was very very large. Uh we originally awarded $1.65 million for this project. And we had five public social services projects that started up at the end of 2023. And those contracts were meant to end today
um the 30th of June. And our next grant cycle is starting up on uh January 1st, 2026. So for some of these programs, which are programs that we fund pretty consistently, they ended up with about a six-month gap between funding. Um so
what we're proposing is to take uh $33,000 that are unexpended from a sidewalk replacement budget. Uh we had some projects come in with bids under our original budget, so those funds are currently unallocated. and we're going to reallocate them to the Center for
Self-Reliance Food Pantry on Main Street, which is a project of Community Action Pioneer Valley. Like I said, this is an ongoing project, so they've already received funds under this grant. They're already obviously operating at full capacity, and the goal here is just to kind of bridge them over so that they
don't have to reduce their staffing until they can receive their other funding um in January. Um, so it's a relatively straightforward process because this is already an ongoing project. Um, but we have to hold a public hearing, make sure the public is aware that we're reallocating these
funds. Um, with uh this additional funds to the Center for Self-Reliance, we will be right at the maximum that we're allowed to grant to public social services. I will say one thing we've heard consistently from the public at these hearings is that folks want us to
max out what we give to our local social services and we're happy to do that. Um so that uh if anyone has any questions or comments about that I'm happy to give you some more information if you have specific questions about the center for self-reliance. We're also lucky to have
Francis Halls from community action here as well to answer questions. Stephanie. Hi, Stephanie Duclo. Um 166 Chapman Street. I actually did have a few questions. Uh this $33,000
coming from our sidewalks um to go is did I did I hear that it's going to a salary for someone at the center of reliance? I mean, I know that we have a lot of potholes and, you know, if we can reallocate that money to stuff
that it should have gone to, I guess, in the first place, um, I'd feel better about that. Um, and I'm confused because I thought you said there was two parts of the hearing and I thought that this money was to go to a locker or some lockers. So, I'm a little confused. If
you could clarify, that would be great. Yep. So, uh, we will get to the lockers. That's the second part. Like you said, um these funds, they were originally part of the projected budget for sidewalk replacements that we completed last summer. Um we take a estimate from
the city's um engineering supervisor and that's the budget we give the state to allocate to those projects. Unfortunately, the bid came in under that. So understandable that the next question is can we allocate those funds to another sidewalk or infrastructure
project in the first instance? that's the easy straightforward thing to do. The reality is just that 33,000 actually is not enough to do a substantial sidewalk project um at all. The sort of minimum for any chunk of sidewalk that we've looked at is in the 100,000 range
um really for well under a half mile. Um so it's it's funds we have to use up by the end of this calendar year. And so the straightforward thing to do after we kind of exhausted that possibility was to look for another existing project
that could use the funds. But that's why they don't get automatically reallocated to a sidewalks project. And I'm sorry, was there a second part to your question, Stephanie? Well, well, I'm just saying because I I maybe recall that it was a uh the
complete streets project, but I'm not 100% sure where that that grant money was uh completely allocated because I know that some of the sidewalks um in my neighborhood. Some of the neighbors uh decided they didn't want sidewalks in. So, they had talked about maybe moving
the money to another like project. Um, we currently have a sinkhole in the middle of one of our sidewalks here on Chapman and we're not asking for a complete street to be done. I I mean, if we're tight on money and I can visibly
see a sinkhole impa impacting um the walkway, I would think $33,000 could help maybe fill up some of those holes that I keep, you know, they that Right. So, I don't know. I just I I have a
problem when we try to allocate the money to something that is um I guess a value choice rather than I can visibly see a hole in the sidewalk and
we're complaining about staffing and money on the DPW side and we're now taking $33,000 and change to move it to an agency that apparently seemed like it was going to salaries when the hole on
my street is still not fixed. So, I don't know if it's a monetary issue or if it's just a labor issue, but I'd like that hole fixed before we even contemplate giving this money away. Thank you. Um I'm not sure I'm not sure what the
complete streets project was that had to do with sidewalks. Um, I will say that Chapman Street is on the list of sidewalk replacements for the fiscal year 25 grant, but I'm not positive we will be able to do it. And the reason is that in order to do any infrastructure
projects with CDBG, we have to prove to the state that the neighborhood is predominantly low or moderate income and that means doing surveys. Absolutely 100% is I actually live in this neighborhood and the majority is section
8 housing or low lowincome or lowincome homeowners. So we completely qualify for that designation. I hear you. But that is something I need evidence of to give to the state. Um and they've been quite stringent about that
which is why we do the income surveys. I will say if you live in Chapman Street, please when I release my income surveys this summer, make sure that you and your neighbors fill them out because it's super important um for us to be able to get the funding approved. Otherwise, I
can't I can't use it for infrastructure. Um I'm sorry. What kind of evidence would you need? Like I said, it's a survey. Um, and so we we uh we need to show that a statistically significant sample of
people surveyed um reported that they were low or moderate income. It's a requirement that the state makes us do. We might objectively know or hazard a good guess that that street is predominantly low or moderate income,
but EOHLC, the state agency that runs this grant, has a certain way that they require us to prove it, which is why we have to do the income surveys, unfortunately. Yeah. And can't you get that information from a the housing authority that actually pays
the rents on several of the places I'm I'm living next to? I mean there most of them are section eight or mental health or um I think it's information we likely could get in a number of ways but the state mandates that we get it in this one
particular way but what is I'm sorry did did you mention the the way that they get it beside you I mean you're going to go and knock on doors survey or you going to have expectation that all of the low-income housing people that are in that neighborhood that will never
receive it unless you knock on the door because it's all absentee landlords. So, I'm wondering how on earth are you going to get an effective survey unless you actually get that information from like a section 8 housing or um subsidized housing authority.
Yeah. I mean, the the number of units that are subsidized housing is obviously a good source of evidence, but it doesn't necessarily show that the majority of residents in a given area are lower moderate income, which is why we do the survey. Um, it is a paper survey that gets mailed to people's
homes. It can be filled out online and both um or mailed back to the city. Uh, we've done this for a couple of neighborhoods over the past few years and the response rate leaves something to be desired, but I've been able to get a a sufficient enough sample in both
cases. Um, and yeah, just subjectively and generally speaking, you know, I also live in Greenfield. I I absolutely know which neighborhoods are low and moderate income and it's very frustrating that the state doesn't necessarily trust local expertise on
these things, but these are the regulations that we're operating under. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome, Jimmy. Yes. Um so to get you say there to allocate this money there would have had
to be surveys and stuff like that done. So what are the surveys that have to be done to allocate it in this manner to do it for lockers? Is there any requirements that the state and I wonder how we had time to do that requirements and not versus over doing using this
money for what it was originally intended to be used for. So again we're not talking about uh funding for lockers. This is funding for the Center for Self-Reliance Food Pantry. And the food pantry actually does an intake with every single person
who receives benefits there where they declare their income. Um they've been receiving these funds for a while now and I'm pretty sure every year it's been about 99% or so um uh of beneficiaries are lower
moderate income. So that's the evidence that the state accepts for that. I will also say, and this is another source of frustration, that um the bar for infrastructure projects with CDBG is much higher. Um and I I understand that part of the reason is that the state
worries that uh we'll allocate infrastructure funds to neighborhoods that already have moderate high income residents. Um so I I understand why that is a high threshold, but like I said, it's a source of frustration for myself as well. And just one other quick thing
when you said that at first this would be to supplement to keep um people on board that they would have to let go until the next set of funding and a lot of this funding. So that's it it can supplement salary this grant funding
pretty much. It can like usually set criteria that you can't do that. I'm sorry I missed the last thing you said. A lot of when I look at grants a lot of the time it says it can't like be for funding positions or shortfalls in budgets and stuff like that. So I just
wondering how that's worked around also. Yes, that's a good question. Um I I I I didn't say and I can't say that someone would have been let go from the food pantry. I don't know that to be the case. But uh for most of our public social services and we support um at at
this moment in time eight different nope nine different uh social services in Greenfield at the moment. Um a good chunk of that funding does go to the direct care worker salaries. So no one at 393 Main Street in community action is getting paid with CDBG funds. It's
the people who work at the food pantry. All right. Thank you. I just wanted to know the clarifications cuz it it was just a weird allocation to go from sidewalks to nonprofit food pantries and lockers. So, just just was wondering
that and how that all worked. Thank you for the clarification. Yep. Um any other comments or questions about uh the Center for Self-Reliance? Okay. Uh, like I said, that's the existing grant um that we expect to have
closed out by the end of this calendar year. So, uh, I want to talk about the proposed lockers project and also give you an overview of what that grant looks like. And I'm going to do that by plugging in my computer, which will hopefully work.
I feel like you did some money switching around. No, it's not. Okay, so this is the original uh fiscal year 2223 budget. Uh we applied for this
grant in March of 2023. As you can see on the left, we really just had five projects that we thought all of the funds would go to. And boy were we wrong about that. We've added a bunch of projects to this um and switched around
some of the funds. Um, so at this point, and like I said, today is the last day of the fiscal year. Um, I'm also happy to email these slides to you if that's helpful. Um, it's the last day of the fiscal year. So, the social services projects with the exception of Center
for Self-Reliance will all be closed out of as of today. Um, we uh let's see. We added the um Hope and Russell Street sidewalk project, which I wrote complete this morning when I thought it was, but it's actually not quite done. The sidewalk
has been replaced, but they're uh still adding some fencing there. Um, we've fully completed the uh design and engineering for replacement of water manes on Main Street as well as Chapman Street and the construction for that. Uh, there's a southern chunk of Chapman
Street. um adjacent to Main Street. That construction is expected to start soon. And then we have a couple of ongoing projects. um there is some remaining and and I should clarify the reason that there's often sort of remaining funds in
some of these buckets is both because um projects that get bid out sometimes come in under budget which is always exciting but also because a chunk of CDBG uh goes to um administration which includes my
salary and parts of the salaries of some of my colleagues and we've had uh folks coming and going since this grant started. So that's always a little bit of an estimate and anytime there's any dollar left over in admin, we try to
reprogram it uh into a project. So um we're proposing a new project that uh that hadn't previously been in this grant. It's a small budget project, but the proposal um is to purchase the hardware of lockers that could be used
as storage for members of the unhoused community. Um the proposal for this is based loosely on a program that they have in the city of Northampton where the city had purchased uh storage lockers. And when I say storage lockers, I literally mean like the lockers that
you'd find in a high school. So um relatively small but large enough to be able to store uh some of your belongings. Um, and in Northampton, uh, the city purchased this hardware, but then they entered into a memorandum of
agreement with a local social services agency to administer it. Um, so, uh, that that's kind of the paradigm that we're talking about here. Um, and the funding again for the hardware purchase
would would potentially come from CDBG. Um, I noticed councelor Brown is here from the city's ad hoc committee uh on the unhoused community. I wonder if there's anything you'd like to add uh counselor to where this idea came from and and what you guys have decided in
terms of how this should look. Um, not too much to add. Just appreciative that you all are working on this um since this is a need that we've been hearing from folks and just grateful that this is happening. So, thanks for your work. Thank you.
I'm not against the project at all. I'm against where the funding. Do you know you're off mute? Um I'm I'm happy to call on you if you wanted to share. No. Other folks want to comment on this
project? I'd like to speak. Go ahead. Um, so I have concern about the placement of where they're going. Um, and I do not actually like supporting giving um
agencies money that doesn't come back to us. So if we give say $10,000 to Cso cuz I don't know, apparently everybody that's coming from Northampton says, "Oh, this works in Northampton." So apparently
Greenfield it's going to work in. So if so if you're bringing uh you know giving an agency like cso this $10,000 for their lockers I don't understand why they they get ample funding and they don't pay taxes and they have a immense
impact on our public safety services. So I I'm not in favor if that's where this allocation is going to. Um I have yet to hear anybody declare where these lockers will go. I actually thought they were going to go down to the center um of uh
for reliance on federal I mean on Main Street. I thought that was a great placement. It's easily accessible to all the people. But if you're telling me they're going to go in my backyard, again, I'm not going to be very pleased about this. Thank you. So, thank you. Um I I want to clarify
again that uh this is not proposed funding that would go to any social services agency. In fact, and and someone should correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I believe the paradigm in Northampton is that the agency uh doesn't get paid to administer it. Um
certainly not by community development block grant. These are funds that we're proposing just to go to the hardware. And you'll notice I was a little vague about where they'll be placed because I I don't know and it definitely won't be my decision. But as Stephanie pointed out, there's been a couple of different
um sites that have been under discussion. Um and I think that's something that ultimately the ad hoc committee and the mayor's office uh will have to decide. Um but the the proposal is simply to purchase the hardware
and for the city to purchase just to be super clear. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, um, presumably this will also involve an agreement, uh, if it's placed on private property with the city, um, that they must be maintained,
uh, that if something happens to them, um, that the property owner is responsible for them, this type of thing. Other uh, comments or questions? Like I said, the the the specifics are still being hashed out. Um
I expect we'll talk about this again at a future public hearing if uh we're lucky enough to have one later this summer. Um I should also say that folks are always welcome to email comments or questions to myself um about any of the
CDBG projects. Um but while I have a captive audience, I will also tell you all about the other uh CDBG projects. Um the fiscal year 2024 program started up uh last fall. Um it at the moment still
just has four elements which feels like a real win. Um so we have a a newly restarted housing rehabilitation program. Uh the idea with this program is that it will assist with critical repairs um on the homes of we estimated
two to four uh low and moderate income uh uh Greenfield homeowners. We're currently working on the very first of these. So it does take quite a bit of time. This is not your average home repairs program. It requires quite a few uh sort of bureaucratic hoops that we
have to jump through. Um the 24 program also included this allocation uh to the Franklin County CDC for their microenterprise assistance program. Um uh microenterprise assistance is sort of a CDBG terminology, but this is
basically the work that they do again with low-income Greenfield residents who are looking to uh start up a business. Um they have one-on-one counseling. Uh they have small grants um uh and some group activities as well. And so that
just got started up this calendar year. Uh there's five social services under the fiscal year 2024 program and those just uh started up in January I believe. Um uh so those it's early days with those. Uh and then we allocated some
funds for water manes design and engineering. Um only one of those has gotten started just yet and it's for water man replacement on Davis Street. So that's where we are with fiscal year 24. And then fiscal year 25 we just
submitted our application to the state. I say just that was in April. Um and it involves again five social services programs. Um, another slate of sidewalk improvements. The only one of those I can confirm right now, um, is a chunk of
sidewalk on, oh, I hope I'm not a speaking. Elm Street, uh, close to the housing authority. Um, and that in fact was one that the state did approve without us conducting income surveys simply on the basis of the overwhelming
number of public housing units area. Um, as I said earlier that uh we're we're also hoping to sorry, we're also hoping to allocate some of those funds to a good chunk of sidewalk replacement on Chapman Street. Um, and then a third
location uh TBD. The city h is currently working on uh revamping our our full sidewalk inventory. Um so we're kind of putting a pin in that until uh that work is completed. So, as I said, we submitted that
application in April uh proposal to EOHLC, which is the state agency that oversees this grant. They uh they assure us that we should be receiving the award uh in October or sometime this fall. We usually have to give ourselves a couple
of months to uh complete contracting. So those projects on the previous slide, those aren't expected to start up um until 2026 in January and expected to be completed by March 31st, 2027.
Any last comments or questions about any of these projects or CDBG in general? I used to teach college students, so I always leave a good chunk of time after I ask my questions in case somebody uh changes their mind. But like I said, if
you have comments or questions, you should always feel free to email me. Um if you do, uh I don't have the hearing notice in front of me, but I usually leave a date on it by which any comments you give me will be included in the public record that we share with the state about this particular public
hearing. So, if you wanted to put something in writing, you're welcome to do that as well. Um, thanks folks for attending. Yeah. Five o'clock on Friday. Five o'clock on Friday, uh, is the deadline to send me written comments if you would like to. All right. Thanks so
much, folks. Enjoy the beautiful day.