Programs to help seniors, at-risk youth, battered women and
low-income residents got their annual financial boost Wednesday
night when the City Council handed out $172,200 in grants. New this
year is a $4,996 grant to transport youth to the city
’s Aquatic Center, due to open this summer.
Programs to help seniors, at-risk youth, battered women and low-income residents got their annual financial boost Wednesday night when the City Council handed out $172,200 in grants. New this year is a $4,996 grant to transport youth to the city’s Aquatic Center, due to open this summer.
The grants are part of the city’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) annual allocation for fiscal year 2004-05. The amount city will receive in CDBG funds from the federal government is the same as last year but $2,846 less than 2002-03. Agencies that received grants last year thanked the council warmly for their support.
However, grants awarded Wednesday night might be the last since President Bush’s upcoming budget eliminates such funding, City Manager Ed Tewes said.
“All those groups that thanked us for our support could be at risk in the future if the federal budget doesn’t include this grant money,” Tewes said.
Under the rules of disposition, $35,366 can be used for public services, $15,000 for program administration and $121,834 for nonpublic services such as park improvements. Because of the on-going fiscal crisis, the city was unable to match last year’s amounts for most of the applicants though several requests were filled from other, non-CDBG funds.
Before council determined who would get what, a representative from each agency thankedthe council for past grants and telling what was new in their neighborhood.
Lori Escobar, director of El Toro Youth Center, which received $15,500 it asked for, told of giving English and computer classes to dayworkers. The soon-to-open South County Dayworker Center, which will care for the laborers in the future, received $5,000. Because El Toro Youth Center’s success is fast causing it to outgrow its space, council allotted $71,834 to renovate and expand the Friendly Inn, thinking El Toro could use the space once seniors move into the new indoor recreation center. The Live Oak Adult Day Care program received $3,990 in CDBG funds.
The remaining $50,000 will be devoted to improvements at Galvan Park, scheduled for last year but delayed. The 2003-04 funding was used instead for the dayworker center.
The CDBG program started in the 1970s, intending to provide federal funds for projects that encourage and facilitate community development in neighborhoods for low and moderate income people. Because Morgan Hill is not an entitlement city (populations of 50,000 or more), Santa Clara County administers the program and funnels CDBG money to the city.
Council performed a bit of fiscal magic after a grant request from the Lighthouse, a religion-based outreach group for at-risk youth, was not submitted in time. John Edwards, a Lighthouse manager, told council that he had submitted the application in time and council took him at his word, shuffling money around to provide $5,880 of the $20,000 request.
In order to do this, council moved $2,415 from Catholic Charities’ Long Term Care Ombudsman program and $3,465 from Second Harvest Food Bank’s Operation Brown Bag to the Lighthouse. The Ombudsman and Brown Bag programs were then funded at the same level from the Senior Housing Trust Fund, since the programs serve seniors.
Councilwoman Hedy Chang asked if an additional $1,000 could be taken from the senior housing fund but Councilman Larry Carr said he was uncomfortable with drawing down from the $200,000 fund any more than necessary; the matter was dropped.
Another Catholic Charities program, Day Break Respite, was given $8,600 from the Senior housing trust fund.
Council may also augment CDBG funds with money from the Redevelopment Agency’s 20 percent housing set-aside ($55,000) and housing mitigation funds ($15,000).
Shared Housing at Depot Commons, a living center for single, working mothers, received $15,000 from the Redevelopment Agency’s 20 percent housing set aside. Project Sentinel, a tenant-landlord dispute resolution program, was awarded $25,000 and La Isla Pacifica, Community Solution’s shelter for battered women and their children gathered in $16,000, both from the same RDA fund.
