City seeks applications for block grants

Date: 1/24/2012

Jan. 25, 2012

By Debbie Gardner

debbieg@thereminder.com

WESTFIELD — The Office of Community Development and Planning is seeking applications from non-profit organizations and groups to determine how best to distribute the city’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program funds for fiscal year (FY) 2012-13.

Applications, which must be received in the city’s Community Development Office by March 9, are available online at www.cityofwestfield.org/?page_id=1567 or in the Development office at City Hall, 59 Court St., Room 301.

According to materials presented at a Jan. 18 grant information session by the city’s CDBG Coordinator Diana McLean, Westfield is scheduled to receive $318, 283 in block grant funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) this grant cycle. She said that figure represents a 21 percent decrease from the city’s FY 2011 CDBG grant, which was $404,399.

“Our HUD representative in Boston is not sure why Westfield was hit so hard,” McLean said, adding that the grant numbers for all communities dropped this year, but not to the extent Westfield’s did. “Were looking at what the needs of the community are, what resources are available, what our priorities are as a whole and what action steps we can take [to continue programs].”

McLean said the CDBG grant usually provides at least partial funding for 11 to 12 programs a year, ranging from a General Education Development (GED) program run by DOMUS, a housing program, to a senior companion program at the Senior Center to a series of Best Retail Practices seminars conducted by the Westfield Business Improvement District.

According to McLean, CDBG grant funds target a municipality’s low and moderate-income residents and are usually divided among projects that address one of three areas —maintaining affordable housing, creating an suitable living environment and expanding economic development. In Westfield, she said the grants fund projects “focused on the downtown census tract.”

Tina Gorman. executive director of the Westfield Senior Center, said the cutback to Westfield’s CDBG grant for 2012 was going to require that she — and the administration of the city’s other non-profit organizations — reevaluate the ways they provide services to their populations.

“I think [this reduction] forces us to just be very creative in how we make up for these funds,” Gorman said.

“I don’t always think that is a bad thing,” she continued. “Programs evolve and sometimes there is a better way, a more efficient way, to do them.”