The latest in a series of posts on City government
Gadfly was quite interested in the Housing and Urban Development grant allocations to local organizations made through the City on Monday.
This is probably a process unfamiliar to most followers, and Gadfly is seeing it for the first time.
Organizations submit proposals to the City.
See the previous post in this series for the list of recipients (nobody who applied was cut) and the proposed allocations totaling approximately $1.5m.
The list is full of worthy familiar names, and it is not hard to imagine how important the money is and what would be not done without it: Hispanic Center, Hogar Crea, New Bethany Ministries, Bethlehem Co-Op, Bethlehem Public library, YMCA, and so forth.
Councilman Reynolds spoke of the importance of the program and thanked the social service providers and the City:
Community and Economic Development director Alicia Miller Karner described the process and presented the proposed recipients:
Gadfly follower Dana Grubb, long-time City of Bethlehem professional working in this area before he retired, provided food for thought: a possible moratorium on non-profits as was done in the past, 2) targeting housing rehab dollars, for example to areas like Northside 2027, 3) streets, 4) playgrounds, and 5) cautions about the Bethlehem Co-Op’s lack of argument for supporting low and moderate income folk and the number of elected voting members who are members of the Co-Op.
To tell d’troot, where so much money is involved, Gadfly expected to see competition for the funding. Not so. The recipients as proposed by the City were approved by the Community Development Committee at Monday’s meeting and the ball now passed to the full City Council for further approval.
But there was one issue and that was with the Co-Op.
Gadfly will pick up that interesting issue next time in this thread.
