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Community Development Block Grant Update : Thanks to some serious research on the part of our Finance staff, we now have an outlet for the Energy Assistance Program . In particular, Genise Lay, did an excellent job of identifying and contracting with the Community Action Agency of St. Louis County, to administer the program. It was difficult to identify an agency willing to assist only U-City residents under the CDBG administrative guidelines. The Community Action Agency also distributes federal LIHEAP energy assistance and local Dollar More energy assistance. We will coordinate with this agency to advertise times when they will be available in U-City. They will distribute our funds when the other two sources reach their maximum with each family, or when these other funds have been fully expended for the year. We are looking at a maximum disbursement of our funds of $300 per family. Low to moderate-income guidelines based on CDBG criteria will be used to manage the program. Moderate income is defined as up to 80% of median income, or about $36,000 for a single person family. The reason we are using $300 at all levels of qualified income is because the lower income residents qualify for other funds. The provider noted the moderate-income range as a specific area of need. This year will be a test to determine if these guidelines will work well. They can be adjusted during the year, and provide us more information should Council choose to continue funding in this area for next year. The Community Action Agency will receive a 5% administration fee for distribution of the $10,000. CDBG will not pay provider admin costs so the City will need to pay the $500 administration fee from the general fund. The County has concerns regarding $5,000 in CDBG funds earmarked by the City for the Salvation Army due to their inability to follow our U-City based criteria. Our scope states that we are paying for University City’s homeless which the Salvation Army has very few of, so we are altering our scope to state that it is just meals for the homeless. We may want to analyze whether we continue this funding for 2008 since it does not directly benefit U-City residents or Salvation Army city services. We provided the for their homeless program this year; by lifting the U-City residential requirement, we may continue to use the funds. Mt. Gideon Church receives $4,000 for distributing meals. Mt. Gideon is a U- City church and serves approximately 10,000 meals a year to low income or homeless people. Reverend Houston believes that about 75% of the people are U-City residents. The program is run by church volunteers and is partially funded with donations. The County will not agree to fund this program because there is no formal income verification of each participant at the site. We researched assisting with administrative fees for the homeless but, it appears difficult, but not impossible, per CDBG regulations to grant funds to religious organizations directly for their expenses. Because we made a commitment to the church for this program, I recommend moving the 2007 - $4,000 CDBG grant to some general fund reimbursable fund (such as code enforcement or police) and giving