The Development & Government Relations met this week and, together with Alicia Zoeller, director of the city’s Community Development office, reviewed petitions for funds by more than a dozen city entities.

You can review the entities here. Three documents reference CDBG — Community Development Block Grants. The federal government sends local municipalities taxpayer money to disburse.

At the same time, Councilor Michael Sullivan said that the Trump administration is cutting money for much-needed infrastructure,

“My suggestion is given what has gone on lately in Washington and knowing how what general funds already are in jeopardy and the condition of the infrastructure in the city… . If you look at everything else on the list, whether it be in housing, Wisteriahurst (Museum & Gardens), parks and rec, anything — if you don’t have water, sewer, electricity and gas, that’s your foundation for everything else. Everything else we’ve got. We know we’ve got serious problems with stormwater separation and with a 150-year-old sewer system. If anybody needs a reminder right now, we had a pothole…. open up right on Maple and Essex. It was big enough to swallow a PVTA bus. My suggestions that we allocate the entire (funds solicited) to the DPW for sewer infrastructure.”

The federal government has already cancelled giving the city $19 million for repairing sewer issues. A story from WWLP has the story here.

The complete meeting can be viewed here.

After a City Council meeting earlier this month that ended abruptly as tempers flared, the City Council held a special meeting on Monday to vote on allocating $500,000 to several schools to pay for design and repairs.