CDBG Council Discretionary Funds Process Change

At a glance

Built from an automatic speech-to-text transcript of the October 22, 2026 hearing; no minutes are posted.

What: The Community Development department proposes to stop treating council's share of CDBG (about 40 percent of grants, called NDA) as a lump sum set after the public sees the plan, and instead list named projects in the annual plan.
Where it stands: Proposed. Staff want a few sentences per project from each council member starting in November so the items can be in the annual plan that goes out for public comment in early March and is due to HUD April 15. Council members questioned the speed and the loss of flexibility.

Staff said HUD has flagged this share for lacking public input, and that lump sums break federal procurement and monitoring rules; HUD has criticized the arrangement for decades.
Council's allocation would become an internal earmark in the department's ledger, about $425,000 as stated (council usually gets roughly $437,000), that is turned into projects. Funds could be earmarked across several years for a larger project; unspent balances (about $3 million) should be under contract by March 2027.
Harsh and others said the schedule is roughly seven months behind the normal cycle and the request pulls 2027 planning forward; staff said the real deadline is January and the plan can be amended later with another comment period.
A council member warned that a CDC allocation process that starts in weeks and goes to public scrutiny before March is a sharp break from past practice; staff said federal scrutiny leaves no choice and that the pending general-fund swap legislation would take CDBG out from under these rules.
Staff can help shape requests for proposals, and members could sit on scoring committees; members may work with department staff directly or through their own staff.

2026-10-22 - Development, Planning and Sustainability Committee - Proposal presented and debated; implementation targeted for November, with project descriptions from council due for inclusion in the 2027 annual plan.