HOGANSVILLE – The city of Hogansville has put in for a Community Development Block Grant for $700,000 for water and sewer work.

A Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) is a funding source for cities provided by the state for revitalization of water, sewer and other infrastructure needs. Grants are awarded on points and the process is very competitive.

This year Hogansville is putting in an application to take care of a couple sections of its Mill Village.

“We have a grant to to do work on Highway 29, up Boyd Road, and Lee Street to repair some sewer lines because they need relining and replacing,” said Hogansville City Manager James Woods.

Hogansville also is looking at water and sewer work being done from Granite Street to Lincoln Street, north of the Senior Center to the city limits line on Green Street.

“The focus will be around the Senior Citizen’s Center, the housing projects, down on Askew Avenue, down on the end of White Street and Royal Avenue, and going down Blue Creek Court,” said Woods. “These two sections are what they are looking at.”

The DCA (Department of Community Affairs) – which provides a variety of community development programs to help the state’s communities realize their growth and development goals – will give Hogansville up to $750,000 in grant funds, if the application is competitive enough, said Woods.

Hogansville will be going after $700,000 of grant and then match it with about $50,000 worth of match money. Hogansville is required to do $22,000 but the city is looking into adding another $50,000 to expand the project.

“A big chunk of the CDBG is federal funds that come down from the federal government and the state does a small match,” said Woods. “They have a pool of money and after they look at grant applications, they send that pool of money out to a competitive group of cities.”

Hogansville expects to know if the city will receive the grant for these two development projects by late fall 2017 or at the beginning of 2018.

The Hogansville City Council also has voted to move the current polling place from the basketball court inside Hogansville Elementary School to the new Hogansville Public Library at 310 Johnson St.

“We moved it because the new Hogansville Pubic Library is more ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant, has a larger space, gives people more to do and is a much better public access building,” said Woods.

The new voting location will be ready for the municipal election in November.

“The city of Hogansville had been talking about moving the voting location ever since the Hogansville Pubic Library opened up because we knew it would have a large community room in it,” said Woods. “We’ve been having discussions all along. We were starting to do it last year but we felt like there would be too much potential confusion to do it in the middle of an election year and obviously the Presidential election year was very important.”

 

Shirttail- Reach James Simpson II at 706-884-7311, ext. 2155, or by email at james.simpson@lagrangenews.com