Cities Face Tough Choices as U.S. Slashes Block Grants Program
The federal program called Community Development Block Grants is giving out less money this year, causing hard times for many cities.
22 Dec 2011 - Michael Cooper, Nytimes.com
Excerpt:
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — It is no secret that these are hard times for cities, with tax collections down, state aid dwindling, unemployment high and foreclosures pitting many blocks. So, as he sat in his office here, Mayor Ed Pawlowski of Allentown echoed the question mayors around the country are asking: Why has Washington cut one of the main federal programs for cities by a quarter in the last couple of years?
“It’s just insane,” an exasperated-sounding Mayor Pawlowski said.
The shrinking federal program, called Community Development Block Grants, was devised by the Nixon administration to bypass state governments and send money directly to big cities, which were given broad leeway to decide how to spend it. This year the federal government is giving out just $2.9 billion — a billion dollars less than it gave two years ago, and even less than it gave during the Carter administration, when the money went much further.
Here in Allentown the steadily shrinking funds mean that there will be hard choices ahead.
The grants have helped pay for the tidy new facades on restaurants like Casa Latina and Winston’s West Indian & American Restaurant on Seventh Street, which have been credited with sprucing up the neighborhood and drawing college students downtown to eat. They have paid for inspections of 1,500 homes in the city’s poorest wards, and for repairs of some. And recently, behind a door with an orange “Unfit for Human Habitation” sticker on it, they paid a crew to do a gut rehab of a blighted row house at the edge of a blossoming historic district. Continued[+]...
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Article Type: News