The Community Development Consultants (CDC) of Ohio has a recommendation to Union County for its upcoming grant application process.
Thomas Perry, a planner at CDC, visited the county commissioners’ regular session recently and told the board that Unionville Center should be a funding priority followed by Richwood and Magnetic Springs.
He said, as his office looks at the current “application season,” it makes the most sense to pursue Community Development Block Grant funds for those village projects as applications are due next month.
“I think we’re going to have May 22, I believe, is going to be our second public hearing,” he said. “For that second public hearing, we have to publish a notice and in that notice, we have to spell out what you guys want to apply for.”
Perry was at a county meeting in early April for the first public hearing and to discuss all the options the villages have to get the most out of CDBG funding.
Among the available options, Perry pinpointed the Neighborhood Revitalization program, which offers up $750,000 in funding for low-to-moderate income (LMI) neighborhoods as well as the Critical Infrastructure program, which has up to $500,000 available for projects.
He said the trick is whether or not villages qualify as LMI and even some of the smaller villages in the county get priced out. To qualify, villages have to have 51% of the population considered as LMI.
While Richwood has historically been considered LMI, Unionville varies.
In April, the CDC was waiting on updated federal data that would classify those villages one way or the other. Since that meeting, Perry said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) didn’t get new data submitted so the state would continue using 2011-2015 data, which has Unionville listed as LMI and therefore eligible.
“We really think Unionville Center should get some money this year,” Perry said. “So, we think this is probably the last really good opportunity for Unionville Center to be able to get some funds whereas Richwood…is more low-to-moderate income so they should be eligible for years to come whereas Unionville Center (is) 53% low-to-moderate income with a 16% margin of error.”
Initially, Perry said the plan was to do flood and drainage work in the village but after talking with the engineer from Choice One Engineering, who is handling the work, that may shift.
During the first public hearing, the engineer said there would be about $1 million worth of work.
“But then he came back to us about a week ago and said most of that is paving and we can’t really do paving with the Critical Infrastructure program,” Perry said. “There is a little bit of flood and drainage left and there’s also some water line issues, we believe, I think some of their fire hydrants aren’t working, so we’re going to try to work with them and see: do we want to do a flood and drainage project? Do we want to do a water lines project but we think that will be the best use of funds for the critical and for your allocation.”
Perry said they would still plan for doing other projects in Richwood and Magnetic Springs.
For Richwood, they would focus on the parking lot project, which the village recently purchased on Franklin Street and estimated at $279,220. That would come from a $250,000 CDBG request and a $29,220 local match.
For Magnetic Springs, the funds would go to the sanitary sewer project at a CDBG request of $740,000 in an effect to help lower rates.
There are still other considerations in Richwood including the milling and paving of Pearl Street.
Perry said they are also looking at the Franklin Street reconstruction project but since that has made more progress, and since Critical Infrastructure projects can be applied for each year, unlike the others, which are every two years, he said that could be revisited in 2025.
He said the notice has to be in the newspaper by the end of next week so he asked the commissioners if they could make a decision at their next meeting on May 8.