The Upland City Council this week fell short in obtaining citizen input with regard to how money the city is to obtain from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development should be spent next year.
While the federal agency strongly recommends that cities and local officials engage with residents in determining what priorities residents have for the money that comes to local jurisdictions through what are referred to as Community Development Block Grants, ultimately the choices made in apportioning those grants are made by the elected leadership of the cities in question, as in the case of Upland, its mayor and city council.
The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program was enacted a half century ago by President Gerald Ford through the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974. In creating the program, President Ford emphasized that he wanted it to take the place of the administration of inefficient federal bureaucracy from afar, such that the decision on how the money was to be used would be made by locals, bypassing federal officials who were too much removed from the communities in question, so that the grant process would be controlled “with the judgments of the people who live and work there” and placing more decision-making power on local funding choices in the hands of local governments and residents who “are most familiar with local needs.”
As one of the longest-running programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the CDBG grants fund local community development activities with the stated goal of providing affordable housing, anti-poverty programs and infrastructure development. Community Development Block Grants, like other block grant programs, differ from categorical grants, made for specific purposes, in that they are subject to less federal oversight and are largely used at the discretion of the state and local governments and their subgrantees.
In Upland, what has evolved with regard to identifying the preferences of the local population is a so-called citizen participation plan, which, according to a report authored by Upland Development Services Director Robert Dalquest provided to the city council for the meeting on Monday, September 9 “is a foundational document that ensures the city engages residents and stakeholders in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of its HUD-funded programs, e.g., the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. The citizen participation plan is particularly important for ensuring that residents, especially those from low-and-moderate income communities, have a meaningful role in shaping the city’s housing and community development strategies.”
At Monday night’s meeting, Upland Housing Manager Diane Cotto emphasized further the importance of public participation.
“Tonight, we ask that you open a public hearing to accept public comments on the city’s HUD citizen participation plan,” Cotto said in directly addressing the city council. “We also ask that you adopt the resolution approving this plan and allow the city to submit the document along with the city’s five-year consolidated plan that’s due to HUD on or before May 15, 2023. The citizen participation plan is basically a way to get the community involved in creating the city’s five-year consolidated plan.”
Cotto again emphasized the importance of getting city residents involved.
“The purpose of the citizen participation plan is to ensure transparency and to give the public a chance to provide input on how the federal funds are spent and ensure decisions are community-driven,” she said. “The citizen participation plan makes sure there are public meetings and comment periods so people can voice their opinions and influence decisions about local projects and priorities. This feedback helps shape the consolidated plan and outlines how the city will use the federal funds.”
After Cotto’s statements concluded, the council asked no questions.
Mayor Bill Velto then announced, “We’ll open the public hearing.”
At that point, City Clerk Kerri Johnson responded: “I don’t have any speakers on this item.”
Velto said, “In that case, then, we’ll close the public hearing.” The public hearing was open for a total of six seconds. The council voted unanimously to adopt the resolution.
Several people who were in attendance at the meeting indicated their belief that the public hearing failed to generate any public participation because of inadequate noticing and advance publicity of the hearing and its significance. Shortly after the meeting concluded, three people in attendance at the meeting told the Sentinel that they were not personally aware of the hearing until they were at the meeting and the item was called.
The agenda containing the item was posted by the city clerk’s office at 6 p.m. on September 4, which meets California’ minimal legal requirements that the agendas for public hearings be available to the public 72 business hours in advance of the meeting in which the hearings are held.
Nevertheless, in Upland after Monday’s meeting, there were some questioning whether merely complying with the 72-hour advance notice requirement was adequate in consideration of the expressed importance of achieving public input.
The Sentinel dashed off letters in the form of emails to Mayor Velto and Development Services Director Dalquest, asking both if they felt the hearing and vote taken on September 9 were adequate, even assuming that the city met all legal requirements with the way the matter was scheduled and addressed, and the public hearing, such as it was, held. The identical question posed to Velto and Dalquest went to a deeper level, that being whether they believed what occurred on September 9 met the spirit of open governance and transparency, which Velto on more than one occasion has referenced as the standard he wants the city to adhere to.
The Sentinel asked the mayor and the development services director if they considered what took place Monday night to have been adequate in all ways, both legal and in terms of activating community involvement in deciding how to best apply HUD money in the city.
The Sentinel asked Dalquest if he was willing to use his status as a department head and his personal credibility to ask the mayor and city council to reschedule the public hearing and the vote that took place on Monday night, and to preface it with a more intensive public announcement and effort to engender public participation in the process of discussing the highest and best use of the Community Development Block Grants to be provided to the city. In its letter to Velto, the Sentinel inquired of the mayor, “Would you consider rescheduling the item for discussion at a future meeting, before which the city would carry out a more energetic and pervasive noticing for the meeting in an effort to convey to Upland’s citizenry the significance and importance of the matter so as to encourage wider public participation in the public hearing, thus giving the council the benefit of that input before it reconsiders and remakes the decision it voted upon on Monday night? Would you be willing to use your authority as mayor to intercede with your council colleagues so that the five of you might reconsider the matter in a forum for which is sought greater resident participation than took place on Monday?”
Neither Velto nor Dalquest responded to the Sentinel by press time.