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New Port Richey looks to tighten its grant program
Approved projects would be less fancy, more fundamental.
By JODIE TILLMAN, Times Staff Writer
Published September 11, 2007
NEW PORT RICHEY - Roofs and garages are in; landscaping and swimming pools are out.
City officials plan to narrow down the kinds of work covered under a popular grant program that pays residents to fix up their homes. Those changes come down to this: less fancy, more practical.
Tightening the requirements would save about $100,000 from the current budget, according to New Port Richey officials. City Council members will consider the changes tonight when they meet as directors of the Community Redevelopment Agency.
Part of the city's neighborhood revitalization efforts, the residential grant program has allowed individual residents to share in the pot of redevelopment property tax money. With the reductions, the city is budgeting $250,000 for the grants.
Since the program's approval in late 2001, the city has awarded 837 grants totaling roughly $1.2-million. Because the grants require a match, the city estimates a much bigger investment over that same period of time from the residents who get the awards: roughly $9.2-million.
With prospects of a tight budget year, city officials were looking for ways to reduce the costs of the residential grant program without gutting it, said Caprena Latimore, city redevelopment officer.
"We're happy we could preserve it," she said.
The residential grant program has two components. One is a "paint-up, fix-up grant," which pays 50 percent matching funds of up to $1,000 for repairs or maintenance to the exterior of a home for "beautification" purposes. The second is a residential reconstruction grant that provides 50 percent matching funds of up to $5,000 for improvements that will add "taxable value" through new construction, which can include new homes or additions to existing homes.
The paint-up, fix-up grant is available to any owner-occupied and homesteaded property regardless of value. The reconstruction grant is for only those properties with starting fair-market values of less than $125,000.
Jodie Tillman can be reached at jtillman@sptimes.com or 727 869-6247.
[Last modified September 10, 2007, 21:21:35]
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by alan
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09/11/07 07:44 AM
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how ugly is this town that the city is willin to pay half, to clean it ,,it must be some type of money launderin thing up in office somewhere,,cause we the people have never heard of such a thing ,,try using the money to repair the streets first.
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