U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler tours the Toledo wastewater treatment facility in May.
The ability of four Lewis County communities to apply for federal Department of Housing and Urban Development community development block grants was pulled in 2014, an action that prompted U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler to challenge the decision in Congress.
Community development block grant funding is provided by the federal government to fund public infrastructure development, but if an area is deemed too affluent, it is disqualified from applying.
For small communities, the funding is given to the state, and the towns apply for the funding at the state level.
The local communities that were barred from applying were Pe Ell, Morton, Vader and Toledo, communities that Herrera Beutler’s spokeswoman Amy Pennington said were misclassified.
Pennington said the Department of Housing and Urban Development relies on the American Community Survey to classify communities, a system she said has been shown to sometimes have a high degree of error.
“With the high level of error, we know that a lot of these towns could have lost their eligibility because of an error, not because they became more affluent,” Pennington said.
Housing and Urban Development does allow communities to challenge its decisions by conducting their own community income surveys.
Pe Ell Mayor Lonnie Willey said this was the route his town took last year. Pe Ell ended up spending $6,000 to contract with an organization for the survey, which they used to successfully requalify the town for grant funding.
But for a small town like Pe Ell, funding for an independent survey can be hard to come by.
“We did that because we wanted to get reapplied, and that’s what it took to get the job done,” Willey said.
The town applied for the grant but ended up losing to other projects and didn’t receive funding. Willey said the town will apply again next year.
Ken Smith, mayor of Vader, said his town will likely do something similar in the future. The funding the city was anticipating when its eligibility was revoked would have gone toward funding a wastewater plant.
The city is currently in a design phase for the plant and looking at lower cost options for the system. When that is complete, Smith said, the city will likely undertake a similar process to that of Pe Ell.
“We couldn’t do it without federal funding programs,” he said.
Willey said he’s optimistic about their chances of re-qualifying for the block grant funding.
Representatives from Morton and Toledo could not be reached Friday for comment.
Pennington said this process puts small towns, which need the funding in the first place, in the position of having to pay to rectify a mistake to receive the grants.
“We really are trying to put the pressure on the HUD that this is a problem they know about and it’s on them, it’s their responsibility,” Pennington said.
Pennington said Herrera Beutler, who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, is trying to find long-term solutions to the problem.
She started by pursuing the passage of a provision that required Housing and Urban Development to provide a report on the block grant funding process and asked the agency questions on how widespread the problem is and what can be done to fix it.
Another solution, which Pennington said would require Housing and Urban Development to find out how many communities conduct their own income surveys, would be to set up a fund that would reimburse the towns for the cost of the survey if they are reinstated as eligible grant receivers.
Until then, Pennington said, Herrera Beutler will continue to address the problem.
“We’re not going to stop working at this until we can find a way to help these communities,” Pennington said.
