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situation and the situation of the other residents on Wilson Ave. and he has a heartfelt concern for them in terms as to what a delay would amount to for them. He said in the terms of the greater good; he sees an opportunity for the City to acquire close to one million dollars to help more residents. Mr. Kraft asked how the February 1 date came about. Mr. Walker said staff has been working diligently to move through the processes as quickly as possible. Everything has been done internally but you are working with state and federal regulations and it is their time-table with which the City has to comply. The staff members now assigned to this project have been doing an excellent job of moving expeditiously. Mr. Walker again said by taking a delay, there is an opportunity to acquire a million dollars for this City. If Council decides not to do that, then we can proceed to buy the twenty-six homes on Wilson and we are finished. Option two would provide the opportunity to buy the homes on Wilson and to potentially put aside a significant portion of this money to use to apply to future matching grants. The cost of buying the other 140 homes targeted for buyouts would be approximately 30 million dollars. The matching funds from the City would be in the range of ten million dollars. Mr. Kraft said he was just after the fact that the date was set by the federal government and said it is a procedural question; do you need the Council’s approval to change a date which Council never set in the first place. Mr. Kraft asked what was the soonest, under the original process, would it be for the homeowner to get the cash for the buyout. Mr. Walker also noted that if they would have had this information at the time of the meeting last week they would have presented it and are not trying to deceive anyone. Ms. Raganti, Director of Community Development, said if the City proceeded with option one, the City would be sitting down with the residents and presenting them with a buyout offer sheet next week and that would only be for the first ten home owners. The actual closing would not be February 1, but rather two or three months from then. She said they could not discuss the offer until a decision was made as to receiving the additional money. Mr. Kraft said he understands what slowing the process down for the twenty-six buyouts will mean for the Wilson residents, but on the other hand the other 140 houses are at risk and the City should do whatever they can to find more money for more than just the twenty-six. It would be difficult for him to go to constituents who are unhappy with taxes, the way the City is spending money but by the way we just decided we will throw away the chance for a million dollars. He would not want that on his campaign literature. Mr. Price said people were killed; people died! We are talking serious business and that money was voted, budgeted and allocated. The City staff does not have the authority to overturn this. Mr. Price said that it was never mentioned when the grant was presented to Council. He said that this was a bait and switch. He said it is not about taxes, it is about people’s lives. Option one will take ninety days what is option two going to take and let’s not play no games. Mr. Crow said to the City Manager who asked for his input. “If we have already started the CDBG process, which we have, and a timeline that looks like it may be getting longer, I do believe you are asking for my input, which I think this whole thing is coming to. I do believe that we should proceed with CDBG grant because I don’t like leaving a million dollars sitting on the table. At the same point in time, I have to agree with Mr. Price that I do believe that the previous Council’s action was bifurcated; that we did set aside the money for the buyouts and we did agree to go forward with the CDBG, so I think we had parallel paths 9