*Principally as part of larger projects

These priorities are incorporated into specific objectives in Table 2C3.

Many of bases for the city’s suitable living environment priorities were laid out in the Executive Summary, and are reiterated here. The redevelopment of brownfields is a priority for the city because it meets multiple objectives: it increases the tax base, reduces environmental hazards and, often, allows for the productive reuse of historic structures. The city also uses CDBG to support public facilities and infrastructure, as well as nonprofit facilities, where there is identified community support for the project and where there are not other sufficient, more appropriate resources. These uses include:

1. Large infrastructure and public facility projects where a relatively small investment of CDBG leverages large amounts of state, federal and/or private funding, where the project significantly contributes to community revitalization, and where CDBG can effectively be used for program delivery costs. Over the next five years, such projects may include the College Street Waterfront Access Project and the reuse of the Moran Plant site.

2. Small resident-generated projects, which empower residents to come together to improve their neighborhoods. CDBG has been for many years an important resource for resident-generated neighborhood physical improvement projects, and although interest in physical improvements is currently at lower than historic levels, CDBG continues to be a resource around which residents can coalesce to improve parks, playgrounds, community gardens and other neighborhood facilities.

3. Both new and improved public and nonprofit facilities, where a relatively small CDBG investment can fill a gap, leverage other funds, meet a renovation need which cannot be met with other funding, and/or support the continued provision of services which are vital to the community.

Finally, the city will continue to support the provision of public services by local profits. In particular, CDBG funding for youth, health and public safety services has been important in meeting community priorities and filling gaps in funding and services.

Here, as in every other section of the Plan, insufficient resources are an obstacle to meeting community needs. Here, as in every other section of the Plan, insufficient resources are an obstacle to meeting community needs. Brownfields funding from the Environmental Protection Agency is shrinking. At the same time, new EPA requirements that in order to meet the dictates of Section 106, the State Historic Preservation Office must investigate every site that the city’s Brownfields Program is involved with –including all privately-owned sites – for archeological and historical significance will detract from the incentives for private owners to remediate and redevelop such sites. In addition, under current EPA rules, city assets with contamination are not eligible for EPA cleanup funding. Thus the Moran Plant, Urban Reserve, Gosse Court Armory, Street Department building, and other city properties must be cleaned up with general fund capital improvement or other local funding sources.

The city’s AmeriCorps*VISTA program is facing cuts that may force the elimination of the program. At a minimum, the program is losing 50% of its VISTA members. Proposed cuts in program administration funding may make it impossible to run the program at all.

Many youth providers have no consistent, sustainable funding sources.