County Again Denied CDBG Water Line Grant

The county has again been denied a Community Development Block Grant to fund the extension of water lines to certain underserved parts of the county
The DeKalb County Commission last fall adopted a resolution to apply for a $525,000 Community Development Block Grant for this purpose on behalf of the DeKalb Utility District.
Had it been approved by the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, the grant would have funded the extension of water lines to Tramel Branch, Oakley Road, Carter Lane, Old Givens Hollow, and Dismal to Alexandria Road.
The maximum amount of the grant was $525,000. Had it been approved the DUD would have funded the local matching portion of 16% or $96,000 plus any additional funds required to complete the project.
This was the county’s second try for the grant involving the same project.
As with the first application filed earlier in 2014, the project was denied because it did not score high enough to be awarded a grant. “Last year it didn’t get funded in 2014. Our score last year was 191 and the cut off for funding was 194. I got with Jon Foutch, the manager of the DeKalb Utility District and Amanda Mainord, the grant writer, and we called Brooxie Carlton, who is the director of the CDBG and asked her about ways to improve our score. She recommended that instead of testing 10% of the wells that 35% of the wells be tested. They did that and it raised our score from 191 last year to 206 this year but the cut off for funding was 217. Anderson County had a score of 217 and was the last applicant to receive approval for funding. We were the next applicant down the list with a score of 206,” said County Mayor Tim Stribling in addressing the county commission Monday night.
The state approved water line extension grants for seven applicants including Monroe County, Greene County, Hancock County, Jefferson County, Maynardville, Macon County, and Anderson County totaling $3,456,001.
Applicants who were denied a grant included DeKalb County, Bedford County, McMinn County, Coffee County, Hickman County, Unicoi County, and the Pittman Center.
The total amount of funding requested among all fourteen applicants was $6,628,001.
Stribling said the county will reapply next year. “We’ll make a conference call. It will be sometime in November before we can start to try and find out how to better our score for next year. These are federal dollars coming down and those dollars are getting less and less. But the pot for people applying for grants is getting bigger and bigger. It’s real competitive. There’s not anything to do but try again next year,” Stribling concluded.