Hello, my name is Haley Hale, and this is the 2026th Annual Action Plan presentation.

It's 3 o'clock on April 28th, 2026.

The purpose of this meeting is to outline the city's 2026 action plan, which will be submitted to HUD this spring.

Evansville applies for grant funds from the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD for community development block grant, also known as CDBG, Emergency Solutions Grant, also known as ESG, and the Home Investment Partnerships Program, also known as Home, through an annual grant allocation and action plan process.

Our 2026 annual action plan is part of the second program year from the City of Evansville's 2025 through 2029 consolidated plan period.

The time period for the 2026 annual action plan is July 1st, 2026 to June 30th of 2027.

We're currently in the 2025 program year, and we are having this presentation to discuss the upcoming program year of program year 2026.

Again, that's July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027.

Our action plan is typically due to HUD in May of each year, which is subject to an agreement to be executed between the City of Evansville and HUD to receive their federal funding.

But unfortunately, due to delays receiving our HUD allocation agreements this year, the City of Evansville's process has also experienced a delay.

So HUD has waived our usual deadline to allow for further time to complete the action plan preparations.

And for program year 2026, our action plan is due on June 1st, 2026 rather than mid-May.

The timeline that led us up to where we are currently towards the action plan is that in June of 2025, we published a public notification about our 2026 CDBG and ESG grant proposal training.

Community development staff provides a week-long training to sub-recipients applying for grant funds from the City of Evansville for the 2026 plan year.

It's a mandatory training which gives agencies proper training required to effectively utilize CDBG and ESG funds.

Topics addressed at the presentation include eligible activities, public service and non-public service projects, national objectives, monthly monitoring requirements, and how to complete project applications.

Then in July of 2025, those CDBG and ESG proposal templates are made available, and community development specialists met with any interested agencies to review their proposals for eligibility and to assist them with submitt those proposals.

In August 2025, those proposals were due.

And we also published a notification regarding the availability of home grant proposals for program year 2026.

Those templates were made available in August.

And then in September and October of 2025, our DMD housing administrator met with any interested agencies to complete home training, review the potential project proposals, and otherwise assist in their submission process.

Home proposals were due in October.

They must serve low to moderate income people, must serve to eliminate or reduce slum and blight, or must be for the purpose of addressing an urgent need.

The most common form of proposal and program or project that we receive is to serve low and moderate income people, and that can be done in four different ways.

The project can be of area benefit, meaning it serves a limited geographic region where it's understood that the majority of those served would be low and moderate income people, such as within low and moderate income census tracts in Evansville.

Most commonly we see programs and projects of the limited clientele project type.

This means that any programs that operate with federal funds must be able to show that the majority of those served are LMI people, and they do that by directly obtaining income information and tracking that within their target populations.

There's also low and moderate housing benefit, which are those projects that are specifically for the creation or preservation of affordable housing.

And then lastly, there are job creation and retention type activities, which are more focused on maintaining jobs that are specifically targeted to low and moderate income people.

For slum and blight, which is a less common but somewhat occurring activity objective, as you'll see later on.

Projects can either be done on a spot basis or an area basis.

So again, it can have a very limited scope for a particular property or set of properties, or it can be on a wide-scale geographic area basis, as long as it can be established that the majority of those served are low and moderate income individuals or families.

We currently do not have any urgent need proposals to be considered.

But those are usually in regard to emergencies that may occur in which the city might receive special funds or anything like that.

So continuing on the timeline for this current action plan, once proposals are submitted, we have a three-tier process for allocating city anticipated HUD funds.

The first step is that Citizens Advisory Committee or CAC, which is comprised of five to seven members, is the first step.

These members are appointed by the mayor, and the CAC reviews any public service grant proposals to make recommendations for funding to the mayor.

In the second step, the mayor makes her recommendations to city council based on the feedback she received from CAC.

And in the last step, City Council has the final authority to allocate the C DBG, ESG, and home funds.

City Council will ratify the action plan budget.

In January of 2026, our CAC heard presentations from the funding applicants.

Each agency was given about two minutes to present proposals, followed by question and answer session with CAC members.

Then in February of 2026, CAC deliberates and makes budgetary recommendations, considering both what was submitted in proposal materials and the agency's presentations.

In April 2026, earlier this month, HUD notified the city of its ESG, CDBG, and home allocation amounts, and the mayor has made recommendations which have been provided to City Council.

Our current next steps to complete the grant allocation process would be that city council members will review those grant proposals and the mayor's recommendations.

Agencies are also given a final opportunity to discuss their programs and answer any questions before council members at a public meeting, which is scheduled for May 18th.

Council will vote to finalize the federal grant budget for the 2026 program year on June 8th, 2026.

It's important to note that this task in the grant process is not complete.

The first reading of the budget would occur on May 11th, 2026, and the final reading and ratification of the action plan again is going to be on June 8th, 2026.

This is past the deadline that HUD is established for the city to submit its action plan.

Again, that deadline was June 1st, 2026.

So the city will be requesting additional time and extension to allow for the grant process to be completed, including a public review period in order to submit the action plan.

The City of Evansville may not submit its annual action plan to HUD until public notification is provided for city residents.

In part, that is the reason that this presentation is happening right now.

The HUD federal funding awards were announced on April 6th of 2026 this year, and as of the date of this presentation, City Council has not fully passed a budget for subrecipient allocations to projects and programs in Evansville.

So it's important to note that in the next few slides as we discuss the proposals and their estimated accomplishments, they are just estimations at this point.

Individual allocation amounts are projected based on what is currently being recommended by the mayor for these programs and activities.

Another thing to note is that the estimated number of clients served is can is written as an unduplicated number, meaning that services to the same person or household will not count more than once in the same month or over the same program year.

Some a lot of programs operate in a manner where the same client or family may return over multiple months to receive the same service for the purposes of this presentation and the information that were later be submitted to HUD.