1/24/2015 Steve Miller review: To support OHCA "Civic Watch", here's my take upon reading Middletown's proposed 5 year draft "Consolidated Plan" to support low income households
 
Middletown 2015-2019 “Consolidated Plan”, proposes to use HUD funds from Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) to (primarily) support North Middletown.
North Middletown section of Middletown was chosen because it has the highest concentration of low income households in Middletown (see page 12).
Middletown cited annual “roundtable meetings” with the Ideal Beach Community Association (IBCA), where that community’s needs were made known (see page 12)
 
Lee Brewer might be interested in  Economic Development Committee (pgs 25, 27)
The document:
A QUESTION: given the above assessment, should I still circulate to OHCA members?  I could email summaries of the above assessment, and Bill's view of risks, below, and post a URL to the document, if someone wanted to read for themselves.
Steve Miller
 

1/26/2015 Lee Brewer Review: Hi Steve -  Thanks for looking at the doc - I found there were many unquantified numbers (especially in the later pages) and some information and dollar amount holes that need to be filled in, in order to really make any judgement. I did find the population statistics quite valuable.  There were some careless number oversights like the various numbers of residences that we have in Middletown. (Page 9 and 14). I sympathize with the problem of keeping track of our housing construction, I just think that for a prepared public document, some care by the author should have been made to assure that the number is the same throughout.

While it mentions a Middletown Welfare department, we do not have such a location in Middletown. I am not sure what it is talking about. Maybe they were thinking of the Sandy Relief meeting room that served the dual purpose for a while, but is now closed.

But at least I want to draw your attention to a single paragraph that was unrelated and yet included in this doc. It was the slider on page 12 for TOMSA for ADA compliance. This has nothing to do with the purpose of this document and it seems like the one paragraph was dropped in without a dollar estimate amount - hoping to be unnoticed. (It could end up as another TOMSA slush fund the way this doc refers to it). If you decide to publicize your feelings - you may want to include that this TOMSA funding should be available from alternative sources - and should not bleed off of this relatively small dollar amount.

Personally I would like the Ideal Beach section to be upgraded - just done in such a manner as to not make it too expensive (property taxes) for the residents living there now to remain there. However, this all is just my opinion - again thanks for drawing folks attention to it. best regards, Lee