City wants set amount of federal funds

Spokane Valley wants a guaranteed $300,000 share of federal community development block grant money administered by Spokane County.

That proposal is to be considered this evening by the county’s Housing and Community Development Advisory Committee.

Spokane Valley City Councilman Bill Gothmann, chairman of the committee of local officials, told the council Tuesday that he didn’t know how other committee members would react. But city Planning Director Greg McCormick said county officials have been “fairly receptive.”

They have no choice, really. Spokane Valley holds all the cards.

Without Spokane Valley, the county and its smaller cities wouldn’t qualify for the federal program, which aims to help low-income neighborhoods.

Spokane Valley, like Spokane, is entitled to receive money directly from the federal program without participating in the consortium that has allowed Spokane County and smaller cities to participate.

Spokane Valley council members gave City Manager David Mercier their blessing to ask county commissioners, who control the consortium, to give the city $300,000 a year without conditions.

That’s 20 percent of the approximately $1.5 million the consortium receives annually, Mercier said in a letter to Christine Barada, county director of Community Services, Housing and Community Development.

Mercier said the city had “a fiduciary responsibility to its citizens” to stabilize the amount the city receives.

Under the current system, in which consortium members compete for project funding, Spokane Valley’s allocations have ranged from $457,319 in 2005 to $77,000 in 2007.

City officials don’t want another $77,000 year, Mercier told the City Council.

McCormick said the lack of predictability has hampered city officials’ ability to do long-range planning.

In his letter to Barada, Mercier called on county commissioners to give their answer at their May 20 meeting so city officials have time to exercise their option to stand alone in the next round of the grant program.

“I think you’re dead on,” Mayor Rich Munson told Mercier. “I think it’s very important that, if we can, we remain good neighbors as we have been for the last five years and that we allow these smaller communities to have access to funds they would not normally get.”

But Councilman Steve Taylor wondered whether the city should press for more.

“Who’s in the driver’s seat on this discussion?” Taylor asked.

Mercier said the $300,000 represented the annual average the city has received in five years of participation in the consortium. The amount reflects a consensus that has been building over the past nine months, he said.

Based on his observation of discussions between county commissioners and their staff, Mercier said he thought the $300,000 was “the most reasoned amount that we could bring forward, and it should be within their zone of tolerance.”

Gothmann said Mercier’s proposal “sounds like a great idea.”

It should help the Housing and Community Development Advisory Committee do a better job of dividing the remaining money because “you don’t have an elephant in the room,” he said.

At least not so far into the room. Under Mercier’s proposal Spokane Valley would still be allowed to compete for additional money.

If county commissioners agree, the arrangement would take effect in 2010 when a new round of federal funding begins.

McCormick said a federal deadline requires Spokane Valley to decide within two weeks whether it wants to break away from the consortium.