[Alicia Hunt]: All right, good evening, everybody. We're just letting everybody get their audio turned on. I still see some connecting to audios.
[Unidentified]: At least it's telling me. All right, welcome everybody.
[Alicia Hunt]: This is the Community Development Block Grant Annual Meeting. My name's Alicia Hunn. I'm the Director of Planning, Economic Development and Sustainability for the City of Medford. And oops, we can hit the record button, record on the cloud. Recording in progress. So this is being recorded. This is also being broadcast live on Medford Community Media TV. So I just want everybody to be aware of that. This evening we have with us to staff from our office of planning Teresa DuPont is planning staff who is going to be taking notes this evening. And then Ashley Williams is our Community Development Block Grant administrator will be presenting and just so everybody is aware. Part of this, I think Ashley will talk to this, having this is an annual grant that we get automatically from the federal government, but we have requirements. This meeting is one of those requirements, taking notes of the meeting and reporting back what we hear at the meeting is part of our requirements by the federal government. So we will be doing that. If you prefer to have comments to us and submitted but you don't want to say them out loud, you can email them and Ashley will provide information about how to at the end with the email address for our office that you can email things if you're not comfortable being on TV or video while doing this. So thank you all for coming this evening. And I think that's everything. And Ashley, I'm going to turn this over to you for our presentation. And then after the presentation, there will be time for questions and comments.
[SPEAKER_06]: Hey, everybody. So for anyone that doesn't know me, I do recognize some of these names. My name is Ashley. I manage the CDBG program. I'm going to give kind of a brief overview slideshow, kind of talking about things we're doing, things we've done, things we're hoping to do. And then as Alicia said, at the end, we'll open it up for any comments, suggestions, questions, anything else. So I'm going to pull this up. And everybody, can we see that thumbs up, Alicia. Okay, perfect.
[SPEAKER_05]: Where's this going.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh no, sorry. One second. There we go. So CWG annual action plan public meeting. Just briefly, this is the open meeting law. It's been extended to March 31st, 2023. Just to brief, the use of Zoom complies with the law's requirement to provide live adequate alternate means of public access to the deliberations of the public body instead of holding meetings in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public. So CDBG, what is it? Community Development Block Grant, CDBG. It's a program established by HUD, which is the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and this grant has been around a long time, since 1974. The grant benefits low to moderate income persons. It's a flexible annual grant for entitlement communities so Medford would be an entitlement community, which means we get our money directly from HUD. uses include public facilities, parks, public service agencies, many of you are from here, housing and specifically affordable housing and economic development. So any project or activity we're using the CDBG funds for, they must prove and they must show that they benefit at least 51% of LMI or low moderate income persons. And I will show you what those numbers are. And just to add in, when we say LMI persons, 51%, those also have to be Medford residents for this grant. So we actually, this year, for the first time in a while, we already know what our grant will be starting July 1st. It's a little bit less than it was last year, unfortunately, but that number's about 1.4 million. And what we get a lot of comments on is the public services, and so the public services is capped at 15% of our total award so that 15% is going to be over this 1.4. Oh my God, there we go. So low to moderate income, these were effective back in April 18th, 2022. We never really have an exact date of when they will be updated. Usually it will be sometime in April. So for the new program year, these numbers are going to change most likely, and most likely they will increase. But for CDBG purposes and LMI purposes, the most important one to really look at here is the blue highlighted one, where it says 80%. And the way to read this is that if you're a single person in a family, your income has to be below the $78,300. If there's two people in the home, $89,500 and so on. Um, I know this is tough to see this is on our website on the city's website and our page specifically what the low and moderate income areas in Medford are and they're kind of this peachy orange shaded. Um, and I know it's hard to see but when you if you are interested, we can get you Why is it small instead of being So this is tough, but on the website, you'd be able to kind of zoom in a little bit better. So this is just our kind of timeline we work with every year, the action plan and funding process. So the action plan is submitted every year in May, and the program year will begin on July 1st and run to the following June 30th. Our office creates a plan with the mayor that outlines the priorities for the upcoming year. We also seek requests for proposals from public service agencies, which we did back in February, and we are reviewing those now. We have a draft plan that's available for 30 days, and that'll be sometime in mid-April, and that's available for comment. comments do have to be in writing and I will share my information at the end of this. There's a committee of the whole meeting scheduled tentatively for April 18th. This will be posted when there's an exact date. This meeting's for public service agencies to present their programs and discuss their applications with the city council. And then finally, we have a public hearing with the city council that's in early May. And that's where we request that the council approve the plan that we've created with the mayor. So just talking a little bit more about public service activities. So as I said previously, it's capped at 15% of the total award. So this year, we do have a little bit of a decrease and that cap is 213,547. For public service activities, eligible programs have to demonstrate that the primary benefit is to low to moderate income residents. And public services, there's a wide range of activities. I've listed a few of them here. It's not all of them. There's employment services, ESOL classes, childcare, health services, education programs. There's different services for seniors and the disabled, for homeless persons and recreation. And these are some of, these aren't everybody, but these are a few of the current public service activities that CDBG is funding. There's a few different programs at the Council on Aging. We fund some of the senior services program at the West Medford Community Center, the YMCA Mystic Community Market. There's tuition assistance for afterschool program for Medford Public Schools. SCM Transportation provides transportation for seniors and disabled for some grocery shopping and doctor's appointments. Housing Families has a pro bono legal service that they help Medford families. The Immigrant Learning Center, CDBG helps fund their ESOL classes. Communitas has a recreation program and new this year was the ABCD Mobile Outreach Team. And these are our other projects that we're doing. We're currently installing a new apparatus floor at engine three, that's the fire station on Salem Street. There are street and sidewalk improvements going on at Pinkert Street. There is going to be design for more improvements at Gorley Road and Dwyer Circle. And we've been doing and we're still doing some tree stump removal and subsequent tree planting in different LMI areas throughout the city. And also some upgrades at Morrison and Logan Park. And upcoming. These are just a few things we're looking, we'll be doing some more street and sidewalk and some intersection improvements throughout the city. Some ADA compliance at some of the parks. Also some upgrades for the McGlynn playground. as well as a second phase of the community garden at LaPreeze Village. We did that last year, and it was met with great promise. People were really happy with it. So we're going to add some additional beds there. And we will continue and finish up this year the stump removal and the tree planting. So that's it for right now. I'd like to open it up for any comments, suggestions, questions you may have, you know, what you think the priorities should be, you know, where should we focus our resources, if there's any needs you feel aren't being met.
[Unidentified]: Anybody? So is this the time?
[Alicia Hunt]: So if anybody would like to address any of these issues, you can raise your hand. I can see most of you on the screen who have your cameras on, or you can use the raise hand function, and then we'll invite you to unmute and share your thoughts and comments with us. You can also, comments in the chat need to be said out loud. I can read back any comments that people put in the chat if they want, or you can say in the chat that you want to speak or you want to raise your hand, and we'll let you read. You can unmute.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm also just going to leave up on the screen my contact information for anybody that would prefer to email questions, comments, suggestions.
[Alicia Hunt]: I see Renee Franks has her hand is interested.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, this is my first zoom. So like, I'm really not the best. But what I wanted to say is that I was able to be so happy to find out that Megan transportation was able to receive your CDB G grant, because I missed them because it was a very needed service for myself. I'm an elderly person. I live at walking court. And there are other services. However, the fact of like having like a cab come and pick me up and take me to my appointment and then pick me back up has been instrumental in me continuing and getting my medical care. Because my medical care is having van guide and sometimes I either don't have the money because I am low income, or I just physically, it would be, you know, I have trouble ambulating. So I just wanted to speak up for the program because I've Nima, who obviously does the intake. And then I believe Muhammad is one of the dispatchers, but they've always been extremely nice, very polite. The drivers are very nice. And as I said, it's a very critical service for me because there are other people, especially in particular when we had the pandemic going. And so I had concerns about being on around a lot of people. So, you know, even though we mask, et cetera, I still felt more comfortable using the CAB services. So I'm just happy to know that you still have a grant because I worked about 30, 40 years ago. God bless you. Thank you. Yes, about 30, 40 years ago, I worked in Newton and we were responsible for distributing funds like that. So I'm glad to hear that the funds are available. and I hope that Megan's transportation is kept. And I'm really excited about listening to all of the planning that you're doing, the self-removal, the improvements to the community. I just find that to be a great reason why I'm happy I'm living in Medford. So I wanna thank you all very much. And this is my first Zoom, as I said. I'm Zooming. you know, and I, and now I know basically how to do it. So I'd be able to keep in contact with you. So thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you. And it's always nice to hear that residents are satisfied with the services. Yeah. Thank you, Renee. You did great. I did.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's my face on. I'm like, I asked my, it is. Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: We can see you and now I'm going to, you can mute yourself now or I can mute you for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I'll mute myself.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay. And we'll hear from some other people. Great.
[Unidentified]: Are there other comments, things that people would like to speak about? All these people, you must have some opinions. Andrew is raising their hand. I can help you by, there you got it.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm actually Anne Bosman from the Immigrant Learning Center. I'm on my husband's computer. I just wanted to say thank you for the support and funding that we've received. I don't know how, like if people have really followed this, but the president recently passed an executive order, I think it's called the Parole Act. And what that means is that there's a direct path for people from a number of different countries that expedites their opportunity to get residency in this country. And as a result of that, we have seen just an enormous number of people coming and signing up and hoping to learn English. It's primarily We're seeing a lot of Haitian people. I think there's a large Haitian population in the area. So those, you know, people have connections and all that, but it's sort of remarkable to look at the news and then sort of see day-to-day the impact of some of these political discussions. So I just wanted to say thank you because, you know, Medford Block Grant, Malden Block Grant, your other funders really help us keep our classes free. So, just wanted to say thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Anne. Gabriela, Snyder, Stella?
[MCM00000389_SPEAKER_07]: Stella Mack. Bread of Life in Malden, we serve well in Medford, Everett, and 10 other cities. And I just want to pick up on what Immigrant Learning Center said, and all these, I see all these other wonderful service agencies, but Renee from Wachling Court reminded me that one of the things that Bread of Life does is we provide grocery delivery to senior citizens. And we just picked up Wachling Court about, I think it was one month ago. So happy to be doing more in Medford. We do about 850 of those deliveries a month to mainly the seniors, some elderly, disabled, and some disabled, and some COVID quarantined, if they're referred by health care. And we're doing about 3,000 people per month at our Malden pantry, which serves the 13 cities. doing other things as well, but just thank you for continuing to support Bread of Life and the YMCA Mississippi market and the food security, because everybody knows that, you know, the extra SNAP benefits just just ended and also people are being redetermined for Medicaid. So there's a lot of financial shifting going on and our numbers are still very high because of those things. And The inflation, especially food costs, some of our costs for purchasing some of our products for like the student backpacks that we do whenever it. Some of those have actually doubled in the past year, you know, you know, went from this 750 for a package to, you know, 15 so it's it's it's it's been brutal out there and for you know. our seniors and other people who are on fixed income, it's very hard. So thank you for all the city is doing for the food security. We really appreciate it. We appreciate having Bread Alife be part of the mix.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Thank you. I saw a hand raise up, Heather Van Norman.
[MCM00000389_SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much. I'm here from Housing Families, and our main office is in Malden, but we work in Medford, and some of our satellite offices for our shelters are in Medford as well. I just want to thank Medford for this grant, it really makes such a big difference for helping us keep Medford residents in their homes. These are really difficult times, I know everyone sees the rents are going up, and You know, everything's more expensive as Gabriella was saying, you know, some of the protections we've seen in the extra funding for rental assistance from the pandemic. Those things are ending. So we're concerned about this that's going to cause more people to be homeless so this funding really helps us do whatever we can to keep people in their homes and prevent them getting evicted so thank you. for your support and for your presentation and all the other service agencies for working with us and our clients and making such a difference. Every little bit helps for, you know, saving money on food or transportation and all helps them pay their rent. And so it's really the whole community I appreciate. So thank everyone for being here.
[Unidentified]: Great, thank you. Terry, Terry Carter, you're raising your hand.
[Terry Carter]: Yes, thank you. Obviously echoing the note of thanks from all of our sister agencies out there who have been benefiting from the CBBG grant over many years now. And here at the community center, elder services is a principal recipient. And for us, the mission has really been one of, I call it isolation busting. Because one of the things that COVID has done, and this is no secret to anybody, it has made people very, very reticent about being out and around other folks, and particularly seniors, because they're in that, obviously, that protected class where health impacts and those sorts of things keep them from feeling as comfortable as they might otherwise with being around other people. But our open doors have really been a boon to the local community. And we're seeing more people, we're seeing different people come through our doors with the sole mission of not being alone. And it's really a beautiful thing. I had the opportunity today to, with help from The principal at the method vocational technical high school take a group of, I think there were 10 or 11 ladies to the Priscilla salon, which is the beauty salon at the school. for manicures, you know, and it seemed on its face like a fairly simple thing, but there's a lot of joy in those kinds of kindred activities now that some of the doors are beginning to open again. And so for us, we feel like we opened our doors early, you know, maybe we threw a little bit of caution to the wind, but hopefully not too much. And the impact has been measurable And in potent in terms of busting isolation in the greater West Medford community and we do see folks from outside of you know the three streets that we originally that originally comprised the black community. in West Medford, but it's really a beautiful thing. There's a lot of joy in it. Anybody who comes by the community center on any given day, Tuesday through Thursday, finds that there's a lot of laughter and a whole bunch of shenanigans. So it's just a good thing to help these organizations, and there are a lot of them here in the room and a lot more that are out there, keep their doors open. and keep battling the things that we're battling, isolation, homelessness, you know, some of the problems that, you know, the immigrant communities have, language issues. And it's, we're just really, we feel privileged to be part of this network, this web that is doing this for the communities of Medford and beyond. So thank you. We really, really appreciate being part of the fabric of this tapestry that the CDBG Monies holds together.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thanks, Terry. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Neema, I see your hand raised.
[MCM00000389_SPEAKER_13]: Hi, everyone. My name is Nima with Megan Transport. I just have a question and a comment. Comment is, thank you so much, Ms. Renee, for your thoughtful comments. That was so sweet. We have the best passengers in Medford. The seniors have been supporting our program from day one. They are just really have been so instrumental in our growth and I mean it's been a need that has been unmet in Medford for a while and we're just so glad that we have been able to meet this critical need for our senior citizens and our disabled citizens of Medford. I mean these are like critical things that you know we're able to provide for them. medical appointments and grocery store trips and just general trips that people who especially are LMI who cannot afford it. The buses, the MBTA buses these days, the services are being cut with the 94 and etc. It's just not convenient or economical for a lot of our LMI senior residents and disabled persons to be able to transport themselves where they need to go. I'm so thankful that our residents have been so happy with our service and have been continually supporting us. Hopefully, we had a little gap of service in between our first and second projects, but hopefully moving forward, this will be a program we're going to be able to provide every single year. And the comment that I had was my connection dropped briefly when Ashley was speaking about the City Council presentation. So if you can just go over that part one more time, please. Sorry about that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Did I just drop that screen share? Yes, hold on.
[SPEAKER_06]: I have so many windows open. Sorry, hold on. Um, yes. So, um, we normally have committee of the whole meeting, whereas we're tentatively scheduling it for the 18th we haven't had a confirmed date with the council president at the moment. But that is the date we are shooting for we will of course notify everybody. And I know you guys are new applying for this because you guys actually have the CDBG CV funding now, which was a little bit different. But yes, we do ask that the agencies present their programs just you know very briefly, just, you know, two, three minutes at most in to the council, because ultimately that they're approving our plan. So it's nice to have everybody kind of present directly.
[Alicia Hunt]: And so for any agencies that are new to that or people who are new to that, that's actually a great way for people to find out really everything that's being funded. Each agency gets the opportunity to really talk about their work and what benefit they bring to the city of Medford. And then the city councilors, usually they just say wonderful things about all the agencies, but it is their opportunity to ask questions if they have specific questions. about any of the programs or funding. We are going to have a very difficult time this year because we got requests for more funding than we have available by a real amount. And so we are also looking at ARPA funding and encouraging all the nonprofits who think they might be eligible for ARPA to apply for that. And we will be meeting internally with our ARPA manager, as well as our outreach and prevention staff that work with a lot of our nonprofit social service agencies and the mayor to go through the applications to try and understand what would best be funded through where. But we do encourage everybody to apply. And it is fine to apply for the same thing from there that you apply for from here. Don't think you have to do different programs because we will coordinate with each other to figure out how to do the funding and spread it out. And I think at some point, if you are going to apply I'm realizing actually we should send this in the email. that if you are applying to both, it is helpful if you can make it clear what is a different ask and you actually are asking for both or whether it is a duplicative ask in order to cover your bases. And it may be that if somebody's funding is appropriate through ARPA and you didn't apply through ARPA, we may reach out to you and say, we need you to apply for ARPA. But don't wait for that. Plus there is a lot more ARPA money than there is available CDBG money. The difference is ARPA is basically one time and CDBG, we get this money every year, but it's much, much less money. So I just, I feel like since I have a lot of you here in the room, so to speak, this is a good time to share that information. Nima, are you done? Your hand is still up. I can put it down for you. Great. And then I, sorry, I wrote down. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: So the deadline for ARPA, I think is coming up on the 6th or 7th of April. Is that correct?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah. So I know I kind of sent that email a little bit late. There was an informational meeting on ARPA in March or a few weeks ago. And I know there were a lot of agencies on that call. And I'm not sure if people just kind of didn't think they qualified, but they hadn't received the interest we kind of expected. So that's kind of why I reached out to everybody the other day kind of saying, hey, you know, we've gotten almost like, I mean, if you total our requests for CDBG, it's, it's like more than double of what we have realistically. So, you know, anybody that thinks they can apply for the ARPA, I know the application, it's a jot form, and it's pretty short. I looked at it. I don't think it's as intensive as the CDBG application is. You know, if you're looking for an extension, though, like, please reach out. Like, don't let that deter you if you just think you can't do it by Friday. Okay.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I do, I don't know if other people are going to raise your hands. There are two people on the phone. If you want to speak, I actually just want to give you an opportunity. You can hit star six on the phone, and that will unmute you. And I'll just give a moment because I don't know how to tell you how to raise your hand.
[Unidentified]: If either of the phones want to.
[John Keegan]: So this is John Keegan. I'm actually not going through the phone, but I can't see the raise my hand button at the moment. Um, so just echoing, you know, thank you to the CD BG group for a lot of years of funding. And, uh, I'm glad to be sharing a little transportation out there. So that's been great. Uh, and, uh, you know, there's a lot of need out there for folks. Um, and, uh, also to echo Terry, it's interesting just on, uh, grocery transportation. It's basically a big social committee who moves to, you know, go shopping together and everyone is talking. And I totally agree with the need to help keep people engaged in both all aspects. And it's strange that we use transportation to accomplish that. But anyway, so that's my comment. Thanks.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, John. Great. Is there anybody else who would like to?
[Alicia Hunt]: So great, I think, so Ashley shared her information, how to reach her and, or you can reach our office. We share an office email is the letters OCD at Medford-MA.gov. What's helpful about that is that it gets triaged by several different people in the office and sent to the right people for it. So you're welcome to reach out, send us feedback. If somebody is watching this on TV later and wants to send us feedback, you're always welcome to do that. I will share that for the purposes of our legal reporting requirements to the federal government, we have some deadlines by which we need to get comments to do that. But the reality is that we welcome comments and suggestions at any time. And we're, we're happy to feel those. We do still have some Community Development Block Grant coronavirus funding available. And so that needs to be used for preparing, preventing and responding to the pandemic. You can make some arguments about how things relate to that. I have had it explained to me that it can be used to prevent a future outbreak as well. So we still have some of that money. Right now though, we need to spend, actually the ARPA money is available for a shorter window than our coronavirus money is. So we're also looking to funnel some of the money through there.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I know you guys, pretty much all the agencies here were on my email the other day about the ARPA funding, but I just kind of put Lorena's contact in the chat, just if you have any questions about it and you want to just chat with her, that's her number and her email.
[Unidentified]: So are there any other comments or questions? Great. All right.
[Alicia Hunt]: We really appreciate everybody coming and participating in this meeting. It's helpful to get to hear from people.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you, everybody. I appreciate you taking the time. Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: And extra thanks to you, Renee. It's always good to hear from people who use the services too.
[SPEAKER_05]: Anne, did you have another question? Nope, just waving goodbye. Oh, OK. I didn't know if you were putting your hand up. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody, great seeing you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.