1.3.2024 CDA Public Hearing

thank you everyone for being here uh my name is Eric monis assistant executive director of The Fall River Community Development agency tonight's public hearing is being held to provide residents of Fall River and all interested parties with the opportunity to express their views on the following Housing and Community Development needs the needs of the homeless the development of proposed activities

including activities related to community housing development organizations and program performance in the city of Fall River the city of Fall River Consolidated plan was approved by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development on June 10th 2020 that document identified Community Development housing and homeless needs and a schedule activities to address them over a 5-year period a time frame

that will come to a conclusion on June 30th 2025 we are developing an annual action plan that will present a schedule of activities and projects to be undertaken during this the fifth year of that 5-year cycle that is designed to meet and address the needs in conformance with the established strategies testimony statements letters requests for funding and petitions submitted at tonight's hearing will be used in

development of that annual action plan for the program year commencing July 1st 2024 completed requests for funding must be submitted to the Fall River Community Development agency no later than January 24th 2024 copies of the requests for funding forms are available at the sign-in table at the office of the Fall River Community Development agency one government center and on the city of

Fall River Municipal website uh Fall River ma.gov a summary of the proposed annual action plan is to be published on February 23rd 2024 in The Herald News it will also be made available for public review at the office of the Fall River Community Development agency and we're located on the sixth floor at Government Center another public hearing has been scheduled for March 6 2024 at 5:30 p.m.

here in the city council chamber to afford residents the opportunity to review and comment on the proposed year five annual action plan residents will have until March 25th 2024 to submit additional comments All statements received during this review period will be considered in development of the city of fall River's year five annual action plan according to the submission timetable copies of the plan and

pertinent related information materials will be submitted to the city council by April the city council will consider enactment of a resolution authorizing mayor Paul E Coogan to file the year five plan with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development honor about May 1st 2024 year 50 of Fall Rivers Community Development block grant program year 33 of the home program and year 38 of the

emergency Solutions grant program are scheduled to begin July 1st 2024 the city of h River anticipates receiving approximately 2,631 th000 for eligible cdbg program activities 1,1 164,000 for the home program and 242,000 for ESG program activities this estimation assumes the city will be level funded for the upcoming program year Federal Regulation requires that citizens be provided information

concerning the amounts of funds that will be available and the range of activities that may be undertaken this and additional information was furnished and display advertisements in the following locations The Herald News cable television and the City of Fall River Municipal website the format of this public hearing will be to allow participants the opportunity to express the views of the city's

Housing and Community Development needs the needs of the homeless and our program performance and to submit requests for funding prepared statements will be accepted persons wishing to speak have been asked to sign a separate speakers sheet and will be called to testify each speaker should State his or her name and address and if appropriate the agency or organization represented before uh we begin the

proceedings and testimony I would like to acknowledge the following statements are requests for funding that have been submitted to us uh thus far uh we have received a letter of support from Bristol County Economic Development Consultants uh who will be submitting an rff in plans on giving testimony tonight um we have received a letter of intent from the Fall River Council on Aging for the four senior centers in the

city um um along with a letter of support from the Fall River Community Housing Resource Board who is a area chto Community Housing Development organization that we work with uh so first signed up to speak and give testimony we have uh Kenneth F Executive Vice President of Bristol County Economic Development

Consultants thank you uh thank you and uh good evening um as noted uh earlier we did actually uh submit this letter via email uh earlier today but for for the record I'd just like to take this opportunity to actually actually have it formally introduced into the record uh Dear Mr Dion on behalf of the board of directors of jobs for for rink doing business as Bristol County Economic Development

Consultants uh we will be seeking FY 25 Community Development block grant funding for the delivery of Economic Development activities ities designed to benefit low and moderate income people to distress census tracks and throughout the city of fora as you are aware jobs has successfully and productively administered cdbg funds for economic development since 1978 from 1978 through fiscal year 2023

jobs has invested cdbg Eda and SBA funds and distressed census tracks and in projects that have created and retain more than 15,500 quantifiable jobs for low moderate income individuals throughout this time frame jobs has been also been able to provide more than $80 million in low interest financing to 680 forough businesses from cdbg and other loan and Grant programs which has helped to leverage more than

$297 million in private sector investment within our community in addition to creating jobs for low and moderate income people and helping Revitalize areas of distress our Economic Development efforts have had a significant impact on the local economy through the generation of local real estate and ex excise tax in fact more than 3.5 million annually in property and excise taxes collected by the city

of Fall River from projects within our Economic Development portfolio as we move forward with funding for the next year jobs intends to continue its economic development program in fy2 and to continue the operation of our previously approved Economic Development objectives including the administration of a revolving low interest Loan Fund designed to create and retain jobs for low moderate income people within High

poverty census track throughout the city as such in order to continue to help create and retain jobs for low moderate income people and Revitalize distress sensor tracks jobs will be submitting under separate cover a full FY 25 rff application to your office no later than January 26 2024 again thank you for your consideration of this request thank you for your professional management of cdbg

funds throughout the entirety of its program and should you have any questions or need any additional information please do not hesitate to contact me thank you Ken thank

you next up uh to speak we have William Kylie executive director of the Boys and Girls Club in Fall

River hi uh my name is Bill Kylie executive director of the boy and Girls Club in Fall River uh the Boys and Girls Club requests uh funding for two programs through the uh cdbg the one of our programs is the step program our summer teen enrichment program it's a program that has been funded in past years through the uh cdbg and it's a uh designed to support uh teens with uh College search career

exploration life skills uh social emotional health and uh making good choices about risky behaviors that they face uh we will also be submitting a proposal to support our Aquatics program um the aquatics program consists of uh free swim lessons fun swim uh Swim Team all at no cost for members uh also uh job training in uh junior God program and Red Cross lifeguard certification for

members happy to answer any questions and we plan to submit a full proposal great thanks Bill we look forward to receiving the proposal um next up we have Stephanie Mancini executive director of The Fall River YMCA good evening I'm just going to read uh the letter and I'll hand it to you afterwards but thank you for the opportunity once again to apply for the Community Development block grant

funding my name is Stephanie manini senior executive director for YMCA South Coast uh Fall River and Swansea YMCA South Coast is seeking funding for the Community Development block grant program for the Fall River YMCA's educational achievement Center otherwise known as the EAC program The Fall River y has been serving the greater Fall River area since 1857 we are committed to strengthening our community through

Youth Development healthy living and social responsibility it is that commitment to our community that gave us the initiative to complete an $1 million revitalization project of which 5 million was dedicated to child care programming including EAC um the EAC was piloted in 2015 to Pro promote growth and development for All Fall River residents and to be a community resource where families could continue to expand

their knowledge the goal is to address the academic disparities among underprivileged students in theirs by providing quality of out of school time programming for Fall River elementary and early middle school youth prior to the pandemic the EAC was providing after school enrichment programming to an average of 150 students through the school year and 75 to 100 during the summer learning loss program summer

enrollment has been dependent on funding servicing approximately 400 students over the past six years with the ex exception of Summer 2020 all children enrolled receive a free YMCA family membership to the Y equivalent to over $900 annually membership includes a variety of traditional programming including Aquatics group exercise Youth Sports and and more the goal of the EAC is to provide programming that focuses

on enrichment and steam projects to supplement the loss over the past three years we have serviced over 700 children between ages 5 to 12 actually that number's gone up throughout the program's lifespan though we do not meet our anticipated did not meet our anticipated goals of last year we intend on offering the program to all of our Child Care Program enrol Le along with our campers over the age of 10 we have

the potential to enroll up to 130 during the school year and upwards of 160 during the summer months we anticipate meeting this goal we are respectfully requesting $25,000 to support the continuation of the Fall River YMCA's educational achievement Center thank you so much for the opportunity thanks Stephanie would you like to leave that okay thank you next up we have Sheila chassis from

the uh Catholic Social Services of Fall River who is the director of housing good evening thank you for the invite so Catholic Social Services is now Catholic Charities of the dasis of for Massachusetts Inc uh good evening um Catholic Charities of the dasis of f is requesting to continue and administer Huds emergency Solutions Grant funds awarded um through the fer Community Development agency uh funds are targeted

specifically for households living at the extremely lwi income level below 30% area median income these households are the most vulnerable to becoming homeless due to the fiscally fragile situations they already find themselves in the ESG assistance um at least aims to alleviate the housing cost burden uh within the community the current fiscal year uh coordinated entry system receives

approximately 16 calls per day some days are greater um from F area residents um seeking services for homeless prevention and rapidy housing in the first 6 months of this current Grant term um Catholic Charities has assisted 28 households with financial assistance and we have expended all of our funding this funding year um Catholic Charities has requested additional ESG funding from the city of

Fall River and um to meet the um needs of the community Catholic charies also works collaboratively with other area providers including the Faller Housing Authority South Coast Housing Court Tennessee preservation program first step in shelters and directly with the community to ensure eligible households in need of ESG services are referred in ass um excuse me assessed properly over

the years Catholic Charities has been honored to partner with f Community Development agency in carrying out the mutual mission to develop a viable Community um providing decent housing and by expanding econom economic opportunities for its low and moderate moderate income residents we welcome the opportunity to continue to receive ESG homeless prevention and Rapid rehousing funding under this year's

rff um you're welcome I I just want to express deeply that this community is in need of additional housing assistance um we are not only seeing lowincome families suffer through this housing crisis but we're seeing U moderate income families also suffer including um the elderly population thank you thank you Shila you're welcome would anyone else like to speak uh or give testimony okay we have Jessica

Howard from the Herod group thank you so I'm Jessica Howard I'm the executive director of the herin center we are a nonprofit organization in Fall River uh we are located at 187 Plymouth Avenue in um Fall River in the dery mill building um so this is my first time so I respectfully am requesting funding for our let's Feelgood program to benefit the Fall River Community this initiative

provides a group of wellness-based educational programs that support physical and mental social emotional learning and creative arts education in Fall River our goal is to ensure that that quality educational experiences uh and wellness programs become accessible to everyone in our community and over the 12 years that we've been in the community we have very much been focusing on the underserved um community

members since 2011 our nonprofit organization has offered Community Based Services to the public our space and programs began because of the generosity of a Family Trust Greg School an and uh the scolan Family Trust and we still receive long-term uh continued support from them in addition we have um in the past three years been receiving funding through our Arts and Cultural programs

through the mass cultural Council the Fall River Local cultural Council as well in addition to um the Fall River rotary and support of our programs and due to our Grassroots approach and focus on service you may not be aware of of what we've been doing in the community so um I'm grateful for your time and uh to just share with you a little glimpse of what we've accomplished um since our 12 years of service but I'll

just um share just last year alone in 2023 so um in 2023 we offered and hosted over 19 Arts cultural and wellness events to the community that um supported and um uh 30 six different performance artists and in addition to vendors that were a part of that and entrepreneurs in addition to supporting economic and tourism we um a lot of our programs have brought in people from New York Connecticut Maine in addition to um

we have one coming up where we're having people fly in from uh the United Kingdom Canada Texas and Arizona so uh due to the diverse nature of our programming and unique offerings we bring in a lot of um people from outside our area as well um we last year alone offered 150 free hours that we gifted to artists in our community for um live performances for Creative development and workshops uh we supported 21 free

wellness programs each month last year which included weekly meditations chair yoga um inclusive dance for the neurodiverse community and mindfulness and let's see we also focus on sustainability and education on ecosystem so people understand how to live in harmony with our world uh we had volunteering programs where we had 2 five different volunteers last year that helped out with our cultural events but

in addition to working outside in nature and we paid support to over 30 different contractors last year so we run a teacher training program and this is our 10th year so not only do we help people in support of their own healthier lifestyle we provide job opportunities to people in the community um we have been providing programs to the underserved members of our community such as elderly people

with addictions and Trauma low-income families and neurod neuro diverse individuals uh we have established programs in partnership with organizations like Bristol elders and Bristol Community College the Fall River comprehensive Treatment Center the star IOP program the fall Riv Fall River Public Schools and many more in order to serve um the needs of our communities and we are seeking your support because

we've received an increase of demand for our services for these individuals and other local organizations and in our community and we know um from the scientific data and research out there that our programs truly make a huge impact in benefit the wellness of individuals um and your support means that we can reach more of the underserved um people in our community which helps to lighten the load of

individuals and our families and just continues that Legacy of kindness forward so the initiative itself is is has four different programs social emot social emotional health Stress Management for people with trauma and addiction support for the neurodiverse individuals through a creative arts program and low individual income families providing scholarships for our um educational programs and training in

addition to the um mindfulness programs we're seeking like vouchers so people can attend free and it helps pay for the instructor sens um and I have the letter if you would like it great thank you you have any questions let me know thank you we look forward to receiving your proposal thank you yes I will submit the final proposal too thank you thank you here you arek you um I'd also like to

acknowledge that we did receive a letter of support from greater Fall River Recreation committee Inc for the community development program for continued funding of that program is there anyone else that would like to speak or give testimony at this public hearing all right thank you everyone for being here just a reminder on the dates the requests for funding applications are due January 24th and the

citizen public comment deadline is March 25th 2024 if you have any questions you can reach out to our office we are located on the sixth floor of government center room 633 uh that concludes this public hearing thank you have a great night