SR 06:095 - Laserfiche WebLink

In addition, HUD has established a maximum of fifteen percent (15%) of the grant (or $43,134) that can be used to fund "public services." As shown in Attachment 4, the HC's review included an application by ECHO Housing to continue to provide housing counseling services to Pleasanton residents. Although ECHO's application has been categorized by staff as a "housing service," the City has traditionally funded approximately 20-25% of ECHO's services through the CDBG program in order to achieve consistency with the policies established by the City Council for use ofthe City's Lower Income Housing Fund (UHF), which has been used to fund the other 75-80% of ECHO's housing-related services. Therefore, staff proposed funding $6,000 of ECHO's housing counseling services through the "public services" pot of the CDBG grant, leaving $37,134 available to allocate to the seven agencies that requested public services funding (the HSC recommended allocating $5,000 to ECHO). The remainder of the funding ($186,916) can be used for projects that meet the eligibility criteria noted above (generally capital improvements and rehabilitation projects). The total dollar amount of applications received (based on the aforementioned categories) is compared to the amount of CDBG funding available for allocation in each category in the table below: CDBG Use Summary Total Total Available Received Total: $287,563 $991,740 Public Services (15% max.) $43,134 $217,557 Caoital / Rehab Proiects $186,916 $774,193 Administration (20% max.) $57,513 ($57,513) In staffs review of the 19 applications that were received, none were found to meet the eligibility requirements to be considered for funding through the City's federal HOME Investment Partnership (HOME) program grant (approximately $160,000 for FY 2006). The use ofthe City's allocation of HOME funds will be reviewed separately at a later date. Commission Actions The new projects were discussed in detail at the two commission meetings. Please refer to the attached minutes from the meetings. Human Services Commission (HSC) Action As noted above, the City's Human Services Commission met on Wednesday, March I, to consider non-housing-related applications for CDBG funds. As shown in Table A, the HSC recommended allocating $43,134 in funds for public services to five agencies (including $5,000 as partial funding for ECHO Housing) and $115,400 for capital projects to two agencies. The HSC's recommendation differed slightly from the original staff recommendation in that the HSC SR:06:095 Page 5