Lorain County seeks resident feedback for Urban County application

Lorain County is seeking feedback from residents to identify community needs and priorities, a necessary part of its application to be designated an urban county by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. On Thursday, the county launched a survey to ask residents what the county's priorities should be and where they wanted federal HUD money to go. Currently, Lorain County must apply for Community Development Block Grants, or CDBGs, through the state and use the state's plan and priorities. If it becomes an urban county, however, Lorain County would be able to apply directly to HUD for funding, resulting in more money coming in and more local input on where it should go. Garvin Carrington-Matthews, community housing coordinator for Lorain County Community Development, said that with the change, the county would be allowed much more control and flexibility over what projects it prioritizes for CDBG funding. Currently, he said, Lorain County receives $648,000 in CDBG money every two years. If it receives the Urban County Designation, Carrington-Matthews estimated that the county could receive in excess of $2 million every two years. That money is used for a variety of purposes, including funding for the county's Meals on Wheels program, infrastructure work such as water and sewer line repairs and the county's Community Housing Impact and Preservation fund, which provides money to homeowners for necessary maintenance or upgrades on their homes. "We will have an opportunity to do more targeting under the CDBG umbrella," Carrington-Matthews said. "... We have already been doing things like that over the years, but the Urban County designation will give us access to additional dollars that we can plan with." The additional money could also be used to provide funding to nonprofits in the county, as long as their missions align with the national objectives of HUD. To be designated as an urban county, a county must have a population over 200,000 not including "metropolitan cities," which in Lorain County are Lorain and Elyria. Lorain County was informed by HUD last year that it had met that threshold. Metropolitan cities make their own grant requests directly to HUD, and neither Lorain nor Elyria receive any county CDBG money. That will remain the case if Lorain County becomes an urban county. "The city of Lorain has its own pocket of funds," Carrington-Matthews said. "With this new designation, the county as a whole would, like Lorain, be able to source our CDBG funds directly from HUD. It will not reduce what Lorain or Elyria get from HUD, so they have nothing to fear from us becoming an urban county. Overall the larger county, that is including both metropolitan cities, will be better off. We as a people will be better off in terms of having more access to resources." Carrington-Matthews said he had heard concerns from residents, particularly in the townships, that the new designation would somehow change the character of the county or of individual communities. Lorain County Community Development has no power over city or township zoning regulations, and the new designation would not change the types of projects that the CDBG money could be used for. "We have 34 political subdivisions in this county, and the 18 townships wouldn't consider themselves a metropolitan city because they are not, but it is the population as a whole," Carrington-Matthews said. "The name (urban county) is chosen through legislation, that is the name they came up with and certainly not one we asked for. It changes nothing for the individual cities or townships. We aren't into zoning changes or anything like that, we have no control over that. This is about doing right by our citizens, and being able to do more for them." To do right by its residents the county has to first learn where they want CDBG money to go, and that is the purpose of the survey launched by the county on Thursday. To apply for the urban county designation, the county needs to create a consolidated plan, a five-year framework which outlines areas of concern and priority for the county. Carrington-Matthews said the county is required to seek public feedback in creating its plan, so it created the survey and plans to hold two public meetings on June 8 and 9 to further hear from residents. He said further details about those meetings will be released in the near future. "We need their feedback because that is a core part of the process," Carrington-Matthews said. "We have to demonstrate that we have reached out to the community and taken their ideas, thoughts and recommendations into consideration for the development of whatever final plan we have." He said that building a plan for how to use the county's CDBG money from scratch, and using public input to do it, was an incredible opportunity to find out where the money would be most beneficial to the county. "What is great about the entire urban county process is it forces us to think more about the services that we are providing to our citizens, and to ask them what they would like to see," Carrington-Matthews said. Although Lorain County will be more free to set its CDBG agenda than it has been in the past, all CDBG funds must be used on projects that meet at least three federal HUD standards. Projects must benefit low to moderate income individuals or households, prevent or eliminate slums and blight and/or meet an emergency need that poses a "serious and immediate" threat to the health or welfare of the community. Responses are anonymous and questions are divided into three sections: general demographic information, needs in the community and fair housing. The survey can be found at research.net/r/loraincountycdbg and takes about five to 10 minutes to fill out. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.