City and county officials are asking Gilroy residents for their input on how best to spend more than $360,000 in federal funding dedicated to improving the community. In conjunction with the county and cities across the county, officials are hosting the last of three regional forums—this one in Gilroy—to ask locals how to address homelessness, affordable housing and community improvements with that funding.
The regional forum will take place between 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Gilroy Library, located at 350 W. Sixth St. Community members will be asked to prioritize projects they best think will tackle infrastructure improvements while addressing homelessness locally, for example.
Each year, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development-known as HUD-delivers hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gilroy through the community development block grant program (CDBG). Those funds are assigned to projects, and officials want the public’s help identifying needs.
“Participants are going to be given HUD bucks and you only have so many HUD bucks, so let us know how you’d spend that based on the parameters given,” said Daniel Murillo, Housing and Community Development Grant Coordinator, explaining the premise of the forum. “It will really put participants in the driver’s seat.”
The CDBG program is the largest block grant program in the nation, Murillo added, and in exchange for the federal funding, Gilroy is required to build a five-year plan identifying how the money will be spent and outline how funded projects will improve the community.
Gilroy’s current five-year plan is set to expire at the end of the fiscal year—June 30, 2015, while the next five-year consolidated plan will begin July 1, 2015. And as a condition of receiving the HUD funding, cities and counties must ask the public for input on how it’s spent.
But while the CDBG funding offers jurisdictions flexibility on how the money is spent, Murillo said there is a downside.
“Because jurisdictions can do so much with it, it’s hard to paint a good picture for Congress about what it actually does because cities do a lot of things with it. It’s tough,” he added.
Gilroy has received small increases in the amount of CDBG funding it received over the past two fiscal years—between one and two percent increases according to Murillo—but he said it will be many years before we get to where we were in terms of three years ago.
“We hope for it to increase steadily, but we’re at the whim of Congress,” he said. “It’s not exactly a known quantity right now in Washington.”
The regional forum is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 22 in the Gilroy Library, located at 350 W. Sixth St. Refreshments will be provided.
