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T.O. to try to secure $673,288 in grants
Money would go toward assistance for low income
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The Thousand Oaks City Council will be asked today to take steps to secure more than half a million dollars from the federal government to help fund services and projects that benefit the city's poor.
The council is scheduled to vote on an action plan to apply for and allocate $673,288 in Community Development Block Grant money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The money will be used in the 2008-09 fiscal year, which begins July 1.
Some of the proposed grants include $183,458 for building improvements for Community Conscience, the nonprofit that operates Under One Roof, the community's one-stop human services center.
The city's Neighborhood Improvement Program has $150,000 earmarked for it. The money would go to street and lighting improvements, traffic-calming measures and walking paths in the Old Town area west of Hampshire Road, north of Highway 101 and south of Thousand Oaks Boulevard.
Mark Towne, deputy community development director, said the area is "a low-income area based on census tract area. In those areas, you can use CDBG money."
Along with approving the action plan, the council is expected to vote on accepting recommendations to grant $200,993 in social services grants. The money comes from both CDBG funds and the city's social services endowment fund.
The grant recipients are vetted first by the city's social services ad hoc committee. The committee made 32 funding recommendations for next fiscal year.
The social services budget for the next two fiscal years is 5 percent less than the previous one because of national fiscal woes.
"During this austere time, the committee has emphasized funding to meet the basic needs of as many local families as possible," officials said in a report written for the council in preparation for the meeting.
The committee recommended that Senior Concerns, which runs the Meals on Wheels program, receive the largest grant of $19,500, while Lutheran Social Services, which operates homeless programs, would receive $16,493.
Posted by sokol_kiev on May 13, 2008 at 1:04 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Gosh T.O. City Council... are you sure you don't want to utilize some of this desired additional federal funding to add to the $100,000 of our tax monies you currently mis-end each year to maintain your precious Day Laborer Site off of Hampshire Road???
I would love to see the Federal Goverment deny the T.O. City Council any further federal funding on the grounds that our city council members (with the exception of Claudia Bill-de la Pena) are just too darn fiscally stupid and inept... as they clearly demonstrate time and time again.
Posted by lorigirl91360 on May 13, 2008 at 10:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Let's close more schools and fix up the streets, and give more free stuff to the illegals. Oh and let's make more repairs/upgrades to the Civic Arts Plaza, and charge more for parking too! How about letting the homeless use the shelter or the closed schools, wow! Sad.
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