Cheshire Selectmen Receive CDBG Update
CHESHIRE, Mass. — The Board of Selectmen received an update Tuesday from Patricia Mullins of the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission on the status of the town's $998,000 joint Community Development Block Grant.
Cheshire received the CDBG money, in tandem with New Marlborough, in fiscal 2018. The goal of the grant was to allow lower-income homes to do renovations and rehabilitation.
"What we offer through this program is an opportunity for homeowners to get remedial work done on their homes that maybe they've just put off for years because they really didn't have the money to do it, or it was just too expensive," Mullins said.
Mullins said there is currently $685,599 of CDBG money committed to projects. She said there is still plenty of money left, with $89,425 remaining for new projects and $60,000 left over to make up for any potential cost difference for ongoing projects.
"The program guide says that it's going to be $35,000 as our upper limit if there's no lead, and $40,000 is our limit if there is lead," she said. "However, CDBG does provide a waiver, and if our bids come in higher than that, then we can ask them to approve us going higher."
Mullins said despite many people wanting to take advantage of the grant, getting through the approval process has been proving difficult.
"There were 11 projects that were not eligible where people just wanted something where we really just could not do that type of project," she said. "There were also 11 applications that were withdrawn over time. Because most of the time, when people withdraw, it's not only the income eligibility because we've already crossed that."
As a legal requirement, each project requires some form of lead abatement testing, according to Mullins.
"So the program has to abate lead in any home older than 1978," she said. "So if it was built before '78, we have to have a lead test done by an independent lead testing lab. And we have to address those issues as part of our project, and so some folks don't really want to do that."
Mullins said COVID-19 has slowed down the process of using the CDBG grant tremendously.
"The contractors took a lot of time off during COVID," she said. "Some handcrafters worked, but a lot of them didn't or had issues with people becoming, you know, within their circle becoming infected with COVID or whatever. And they took time off. This, and at the same time, we had supply chain issues."
In other business, Police Chief Timothy Garner was invited to the meeting to provide updates to the board on the state of the department. He asked the board to try and make room in the budget for another full-time police officer and for part-time officers.
"Part-time officers would fill in the hours that they're off vacations and extra hours on weekends," he said.
Garner said, due to state mandates surrounding part-time officers, the department is at risk of losing officers who don't qualify.
"It's going to leave us, basically, with three people," he said.
Garner, who plans to retire in the middle of next year, wants to make sure the department is in a good place when he leaves.
"I'm not looking for an answer tonight, obviously, but it's just a proposal," he said. "But I do need some sort of choice on who's going to be the next chief because I've got a lot of stuff before I leave to get transferred into a new person's name. With a lot of different agencies that I have got to notify. There's a lot of work to be done."
Tags: CDBG,
