AUBURN — A group of nine Bates College environmental studies students will be interviewing downtown residents in October, helping to kick off work on a spending priorities plan for federal block grant money.
Reine Mynahan, Auburn’s community development director, said the work is part of the five-year consolidated planning process for cities that get money under the Community Development Block Grant program.
Auburn receives the federal block grant money to pay for economic development projects in the city’s most impoverished areas — parts of New Auburn, Union Street and residential areas downtown.
That money can be used to pay for housing improvements, work on public facilities such as parks and sidewalks in the target areas and to promote economic development.
As part of the federal requirements, the city must write a plan to show the grants will be used every five years.
“The theme this year is ‘strong neighborhoods,'” Mynahan said. “We started this process last winter and began looking at a citizen-participation plan.”
Mynahan said the city has convened a 19-member committee to work with consultants writing the plan. That group plans to host at least five meetings this year, with opportunities for residents to give their opinions.
“But we wanted to do more to get input from residents,” Mynahan said. “We don’t have to do a survey but we thought it would be a good way to get more information from more people.”
Mynahan said the students are part of that. They’ve helped design a questionnaire to learn about the area residents’ lives and their needs.
They’ll go door-to-door in the areas and will try to interview people at public meeting places such as restaurants, stores and offices.
The students should return their report to the city in December. Mynahan said the block grant committee hopes to have a draft of the report finished this winter. It is due to be approved by the City Council and filed with the federal department of Housing and Urban Development by May 15, 2015.
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