Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By ZACHARY MARANO
Hurley — The Hurley City Council decided not to apply for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program this year at their meeting on Tuesday.
The city was considering applying for a CDBG this year for work on 2nd Avenue.
At their last meeting in January, Jeff Seamandel from the consulting firm MSA Professional Services informed the council that this will be the last year that they can apply for the CDBG program in its current form. In 2023, the city will need to have engineering for their project completed before they apply for the grant. Completing the engineering would not guarantee that they receive the grant.
Seamandel also attended the council meeting on Tuesday and he said that since last month, the department changed the requirements for this year to include the engineering, so they would have to complete the engineering before applying for the grant this year, as well.
Seamandel said if they want to apply this year, the deadline is May. The the application fee is $9,200 and due by fall 2022, and they would have to have the designs on paper. The CDBG will fund 67% of a project up $1 million and a $1.5 million project would receive $1 million in funds.
“If you don’t decide to put an application in this May and you decide to put it in next year in May, we have to have all the engineering done with the application,” Seamandel said. “So, you’d still have to hire us to do the design this fall in order to apply in 2023. There’s no guarantee you’re going to get the money. The cost to put the application in right now is $9,200. If you wait until 2023, you’re going to have to pay the design engineering, which is about $200,000 plus the application fee of $9,200 just to see if you want to get the grant.”
The city council decided not to commit to spend this money on engineering and application fees with no guarantees that they will receive the grant.
