Groves talks grants, streets: GLO program would fund for infrastructure repairs

Published 8:26 pm Thursday, December 20, 2018

GROVES — The City of Groves has the green light to apply for a matching grant that would, if approved, fund the cost to repair streets, drainage and more.

The Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery is administered through the Texas General Land Office and is a competitive grant for $275,000 with a city match of $50,000.

Subscribe to our free email newsletter

Get the latest news sent to your inbox

If approved, the grant would not be funded until around spring 2019.

And while this grant is good news to the city if it is approved, there is even more good news with a Texas General Land Office grant totaling $4.2 million. The funds are disaster related Hurricane Harvey and are earmarked for street work, drainage, water and sewer work and anything damaged or impacted by Harvey, Groves City Manager D. Sosa said.

A stipulation for the grant is 70 percent must be in a low- to moderate-income area of the city.

Income bracket

The stipulation for low to moderate income does not mean the city is looking to add low-income housing. The LMI designation comes with an income scale and is more attuned for the working class.

For example, a family of four with an income of between $30,901 and $49,450 fits in the category of LMI. Anything above $49,451 for a family of four is above the income threshold.

This income scale for LMI has nothing to do with government housing or Housing and Urban Development housing — it is focused on infrastructure improvements only.

“LMI areas usually have retired people or neighborhoods that have pre-World War II houses,” he said.

Funding options

The city is looking to mix and match funding options to get the work done. For example, XYZ Street is 10 blocks long and four blocks include LMI and six blocks do not. This doesn’t mean the city would only repair/rehabilitate the four blocks. The project can be bid out and use some of the money for LMI portions and city could budget money for the other portion.

“We will spend every penny and do as many streets as possible, as much drainage as possible, water and sewer as possible,” he said. The bulk of the work will be on the streets and some drainage.

The streets will be as before with either hot mix or chip seal depending on if it is a residential street or major thoroughfare — “if it’s hot mix now, it’ll be hot mix. If it’s chip seal, it’ll be chip seal.”

And there’s more

In addition, the city has doubled its streets program funding from $300,000 to $600,000 and this money will supplement GLO money.

“So, theoretically, we’re in the neighborhood of $4.8 million we plan to spend on streets, some drainage over the next year’s budget,” he said. “And with the next fiscal year budget that’s another $600,000.”