Kane County announces $1.1M in federal grants

The good news for Kane County organizations who count on receiving thousands of federal dollars through the county just to maintain their existence is there is more clarity in how much money there is and when it will be available than in perhaps the past five years. The bad news is there are fewer dollars to go around this year.

A Kane County commission that doles out federal Community Development Block Grant funds announced its list of 2012 recipients Thursday. There is about $150,000 less in grant money to go around compared to last year.

In fact, in order to spread around the money to as many areas as possible, the commission decided not to fund any projects having to do with public facility upgrades. That means money for the Elburn Countryside Community Center, the asphalt replacement project at the Marklund Children's Home and the Northern Illinois Food Bank's dock door project isn't going to those organizations.

Instead, the roughly $1.1 million the county does have to give will go to nine other projects that address affordable housing, help fund infrastructure projects in local communities and give the county's network of homeless shelters some cash to fuel their operations. The county will keep about $194,000 of the grant money to recoup its costs of administering the grant program, including actually making sure the federal money is spent as applicants promised.

Scott Berger is Kane County's director of community reinvestment. He said as the federal grant dollars shrink, the programs that will see impact going forward would be the Homeless Management Information System and funds for housing rehabilitation or emergency repair. The Homeless Management Information System helps the county monitor its homeless population and their needs. Funding for the system is already shrinking. Berger also said there may come a time at the end of the calendar year when the county runs out of federal dollars for the housing program and can't fulfill end of the year requests.

The full county board must still approve the recipients list before the money is released.