Good evening.

Good evening, everyone.

We'd like to call this uh C D BG public hearing to order for today, April 20th, 2026.

So my name is Council President TJ Clark, and I'm joined by uh my stand colleague uh councilman John Gale.

Uh just want to read to you a uh disclaimer.

Uh the public hearing is being broadcasted live on HPA TV's Xfinity Government Channel 96 and Frontier Government Channel 6032.

It is also being streamed via HPA TV.org and HPA TV Facebook page, HPA TV, Apple TV, HPA TV, uh Amazon TV, and real cool TV apps.

It also can be made available on HPA TV YouTube channel.

Would like to welcome you and introduce uh which I've already done introduce the members of our council, um, and here's some additional uh housekeeping rules.

This public hearing will be conducted in accordance with the following procedures.

Each person wishing to address the council or members thereof upon recognition by the presiding officer, give his or her name, address, and if he or she represents a group, and shall in addition state for the record the name and address of such said group or organization and shall limit his or her remarks to five minutes.

All remarks shall be addressed to the council as a body and not to any member thereof.

Any person making personal and pertinent pertinent or slanderous remarks, or who shall become voicerous while addressing the council shall be forthwith barred by the presiding officer from further audience at this meeting, unless permission to remain is granted by two-thirds vote of the council members present.

During the public hearing, there should be no debate by the council, although questions may be asked by council or persons making such presentations.

And we shall now begin with our uh CDBG presentation by the director of the Office of Grants.

Good evening, Council President and Council members.

My name is Cheryl Horowitz, and I am the director of the Office of Grants at the City of Hartford.

I have next to me Anjali Croazdale, who's one of my staff, and in the audience is Ronnie Vasquez, who is another person, both of whom work on CDBG.

I have done this presentation numbers of times.

I really want to get through it quickly because there are people here who want to speak towards their projects, and so I want to let that happen.

Because there is a lot of information about the process that we're doing and on how important what we are doing is for the city itself.

So in general, this is a piece of the process, what we're doing tonight.

The process is one that started in January and goes all the way through May.

It used to go through June, but in fact, it turns out that it's more codified by law to actually end this process in a timely way so that we can begin these grants and get them funded and often running in a timely way.

So that we have foreshortened the process.

We are funded by four for four of HUD programs, the CDBG, which we talk about tonight, HAPWA, which is housing for people living with HIV AIDS, emergency shelter, which is for people who are homeless, and home investment partnership program, which is home, and that is housed within the development services.

We go through a process every five years to decide and determine what are the priorities for the city of Hartford, and then once we have done that, and that was done last year, for the next four years, we roll it out with little tweaks and revisions to modify it within the context of what was approved for the consolidated plan.

The process is that there's an overview of what we are going to do, what the needs are of the community, what the requirements are, and what the timeline is.

We're given resources, that's what HUD allots us.

Uh last year it came in a little late.

This year we already have it, so we are on the road to go in a more timely fashion.

Um it speaks to how much we have that we can work with.

And then the final piece of it is the resident input.

It is the most important part.

It is hearing from the community on what they see are their priority needs and making sure that they are heard in this report.

So it's a collaborative effort amongst a lot of different agencies within the city, outside of um within the within the city and outside in the community.

Um the planning process consists of public meetings like this one, and then there's another one at the end of the month, April 29th.

Um, we consult with stakeholders, a variety of them, and uh we review existing plans and relevant uh statistical data.

So comments, we we ask for comments, and those comments are included.

We're in the comment period.

There's a month that that is opened up for comments.

We have a draft plan which will get altered based upon meetings like this, based upon hearing from people, based upon any time any community member wishes to say something to that plan, we accept it and we include it in the plan as it is published and sent to HUD.

The next public comment period as mentioned is April 29th.

We're in year two of this called an annual action plan.

We're year two of the consolidated plan.

The timely submission, what I talked about a few minutes ago, is that if we can get this report in in May, when it is required, um, because the date is set relative to our start date for our fiscal year, so it's 45 days before.

If we can get it in, they will give us our money sooner.

If we if they give us our money sooner, we can start our project sooner, we can get our contracts out, and people can begin the process of operating the programs that they have proposed.

So to be eligible, you all should know about this.

Most of most of the time, what we're acting on is benefiting low and moderate income persons and households.

The categories in which we do this are a little bit overlapping, but basically they fall into about six areas.

The most prominent one is housing.

Okay.

HUD is a housing agency.

That's what it's for.

We do some things with housing, but we do other things which are subsidiary to housing, which promote us and and are effects of promoting affordable housing through providing other services that help, like if we provide homeowner guidance, if we provide guidance for people who who are looking to purchase a home.

So there's housing, and you can see the categories underneath that.

I'm not going to state what they are.

You can read them and you can see them on the online, but this is what we use to decide whether or not a program that is presented presented to us is an appropriate program for HUD.

It has to fall into one of these categories.