CDBG in Our Future; WRDA, Who Knows....

The Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG) was on the Supes agenda today (also on this part of the agenda: Home Investment Partnerships [HOME], and the Emergency Solutions Grant [ESG] Programs) and unless you follow this sort of thing, your eyes may tend to glaze over that steaming bowl of alphabet soup. Mine did anyway as I was watching the meeting online. But then Sunny Oaks, the mobile home park here in Los Osos was mentioned for a grant request for a sewer improvement project and I thereby deglazed.

Today's agenda item was to approve the Urban County of San Luis Obispo Program Year 2014 Action Plan to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for funding possibilities. HUD hasn't released its funding amounts yet, so when it does, the County will need to go back and adjust the final funding levels for Board approval.

There is a lot more to this report than just a sewer related item, so you can read the staff report here:
http://agenda.slocounty.ca.gov/agenda/sanluisobispo/3054/SXRlbSBEb2N1bWVudCAoUHVibGljKSA=/14/n/24894.doc

But more to the point of Los Osos and the big sewer, not just the need at the Sunny Oaks' tiny sewer, was this pithy statement:

The County received a total of 25 applications under the CDBG program for the Urban County. Each application was reviewed using the Board approved seven rating criteria. For the 2014 program year, the County received an application by the County Public Works Department for assisting low-income families connect to the Los Osos waste water collection system. The project cannot start before the completion of the waste water collection system, which is anticipated to be late 2016. Staff could not recommend this project, because it was not ready to be implemented soon enough to meet the CDBG timeliness standard.

So in case you were wondering where we might get help for our low income residents, this will be the place later along in the sewer project.

There was a mention too regarding Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) monies, (long in the pipeline for relief sewer cash) by Mike Miller of the Ferguson Group, our County's federal legislative guy in Washington D.C., dare I say lobbyist? That request was put forth by our Congresswoman Lois Capps back in 2007 when $35 million was then authorized. But as Mr. Miller said, there is a big jump between an an authorization and an appropriation. Especially since Congress banned earmarks, which is what this was. But this authorization isn't going to go away unless Congress specifically de-authorized it and it can just sit there isn the pipeline for a long time. The way to get this funded now (no more petitions of need to Senators/Representatives and the like) is to convince to the Corps of Engineers (and it is now going to be a Section 219 project, who develops a work plan for funding, which Congress then approves), that OUR PROJECT is a TOP project.

I suspect this info and the potential pot of EPA money that our Supervisor Bruce Gibson mentioned, will be part of the sewer meeting on Wednesday at the middle school.