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Easthampton CDBG hearings will take place on Aug. 19

Date: 8/10/2021

EASTHAMPTON – The city of Easthampton will conduct a public performance hearing and a pre-application hearing on Aug. 19 to discuss the microenterprise business grant assistance program and the  Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program.

The first hearing, which will be at 5 p.m. on that day, will mainly focus on the Community Development Fund microenterprise business grant assistance program. According to the Easthampton website, residents and microenterprise businesses are encouraged to attend the 10-minute hearing to talk about the regional program, which also includes Granby, Hadley, Hatfield, South Hadley, Westhampton and Southampton.

According to Jamie Webb, the assistant planner for Easthampton, the CDBG program requires Easthampton to have a public hearing before officially applying for grant money, as well as at least one performance public hearing midway through the grant process.

When COVID-19 first hit in 2020, Webb said that Easthampton was looking for every way to aid small businesses and people who have lost their jobs. In response to local needs, the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development announced the CDBG program to support economic and community development efforts in response to the pandemic, particularly for small businesses and low to moderate income residents.

A microenterprise business is a commercial enterprise that has five or fewer employees, one or more of whom owns the enterprise. It also must be a for-profit entity and provide goods to multiple customers and clients, among other requirements.

“We realized that it was a competitive grant, and we didn’t think we’d have a good opportunity to get the grant ourselves,” said Webb, regarding teaming up with other towns and cities on the microenterprise grant. “We decided that together we can create a pretty strong application making the case as a regional program with Easthampton as the lead of the program.”

What this means is that all the funding from the state from this program will first make its way to Easthampton, and then the city will distribute it to the other towns and cities involved based on who qualifies for what. The regional group is also working with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the Valley Community Development Corporation on this.

The second hearing, which will begin at 5:10 p.m. on Aug. 19, invites residents to hear and discuss the application for the Fiscal Year 21 CDBG program that must be submitted to the Mass. Department of Housing before Sept. 10. Easthampton could earn up to $800,000 in these funds for water and sewer improvements on Cherry Street.

In October 2020, Reminder Publishing reported that Easthampton received $175,957 of Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) money to support Green Infrastructure Planning and Resiliency Design for the Cherry Street improvement project. That grant money was related to climate change and how it impacts Easthampton.

In working with the state, Easthampton created a list of priority projects involving climate change resiliency and found Cherry Street improvements to be one of the major priority projects.

The city applied for funding two years in a row for these projects but were denied the first time around. The city was approved for funding the year after, however. The project that was approved and funded was design work for the green infrastructure and stormwater improvements on Cherry Street.

After being accepted for the funding, the city spent a year and a half walking up and down Cherry Street to see what they needed.

“There’s a stormwater outfall at the end of Cherry Street that goes into Brickyard Brook, and that outfall was probably built in the 1950s, and it’s completely falling apart,” said Webb. “Every storm, the bank keeps moving back…it’s potentially causing damage to public and private property.”

According to Webb, there were two options that the city could have taken regarding these improvements. They could just replace what was there with something similar, or they could create something that reduces flooding during rainfall events.

In the end, the city is planning on adding raingardens and fire retention swales to reduce the water that  usually enters that brook. They are also going to reconstruct the outfall using greener methods that will be resilient to climate change.

“The water and sewer lines are 100 years old,” said Webb, regarding Cherry Street. “The DPW has had line breaks there regularly; the sewer line is just old and keeps breaking.”

The city has already applied to the state through the MVP program for street reconstruction, stormwater and green infrastructure. Concurrently, the city is using block grant funds application to apply to the state for sewer and water line replacement on Cherry Street. The total cost for the project is around $2 million. Easthampton is looking to have the MVP program provide funding for $1.2 million, while the CDBG program will look to provide the other $800,000.

“Presumably, everybody will be excited for the project and being interested in showing their support,” said Webb, regarding the hearings.

Currently, the city is waiting to hear back about the MVP funding, and they plan on applying for the CDBG funding after the public hearings. Once that is done, they will look to bidding contractors for the actual construction on the street.

People can join the hearings on Aug. 19 via Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81735790416?pwd=YzA3ZDAyektwUzRPNWloU1I3OElrUT09.

The meeting ID and password is included on the Easthampton website.