The City of Auburn Office of Planning and Economic Development (OPED) has recently prepared the Fourth Annual Action Plan for Community Development under the recently published Five Year Planning Strategy. The proposed Action Plan describes the community development activities that will be funded through the City’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program in the 2003-2004 program year. The following links show the disbursement of funds:
Action Plan Summary
In this year’s Action Plan, as in previous Action Plans, the City of Auburn will be allocating CDBG funding for Human Services activities. The total amount of CDBG funding allocated to Human Services was $161,000.
The Office undertakes human services planning to provide for adequate housing for special needs populations such as low-income persons and seniors. The Office also works to provide day care for working parents and job training to make sure the quantity and quality of the Auburn workforce meets the expectations of employers.
In anticipation of the review process, the OPED circulated notices that the City would be accepting and reviewing applications for funding consideration under the CDBG program for the coming year. The notification went out to local publications and to all of the human services organizations in the OPED database, which includes all of the individuals and agencies which have applied for CDBG funding in the past, as well all (applicable) human service agencies listed in the 2002-2003 Human Services Directory developed by the Cayuga County Human Services Coalition.
The OPED opened up the application process, making all human service areas eligible for funding as long as they were to primarily benefit low- or moderate-income persons. The Action Plan established an approximate dollar amount available for human services funding set at approximately 15% of the anticipated total CDBG Entitlement Program funding. The human service agencies applying for funding were informed that this was the maximum amount available for funding allocations and were asked to target their funding requests to the specific dollar amount needed to provide the services they were proposing. Funding allocations for Community Development Support Services are identified each year through a five (5) member Application Review Committee comprised of local residents active in, and representative of, the
community.
Human Service providers seeking funding were asked to prepare a descriptive summary of the program / activity they were proposing, defining the need for the activity, its impact on the community and the population which the program/activity would serve. A comprehensive budget, including a line item budget narrative, was also required as part of the preliminary application package. With the proposal summary and detailed budget, each applicant met with the committee and presented their application for funding. The presentations provided an opportunity for the committee to receive additional information on the proposed programs / activities and ask questions about them.
Summary of Human Services Program Funding
The Application Review Committee considered funding proposals submitted for a range of eligible human services program areas.
The City received fourteen (14) proposals representing a total funding request of $289,986.46. The majority of the proposals were for Youth Services / Child Care, Job Training/Services and then followed by Senior Services.
The Application Review Committee has elected to fund eleven (11) of the proposals submitted, also the Committee has also recommended revising some of the funding requests. Again, with only $161,000 available for funding and $289,986.46 requested in funding, the application review committee had to decide which programs met the criteria and needs as described in the Request for Proposal (RFP) process.
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