San Benito County’s 2012 Community Development Block Grant application has been deemed eligible for a review a month after the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development first deemed it in ineligible.
County staff received an email that their application will be reviewed after all.
The county auditor’s office was first notified at the beginning of March that their application, along with those of 15 other government agencies, had not submitted a single audit report to the state controller’s office as required by the grant’s notice of funding availability.
The county’s application included requests for $100,000 to operate the homeless emergency winter shelter; $200,000 for job training services at Community Services and Workforce Development; $162,500 to operate Emmaus House, a shelter for victims of domestic violence; and $37,500 for administration funds.
The state controller’s office looked into the issue in May and determined that 15 of the 22 applications that had been denied had actually met the requirements for the notice of funding availability. At question for many of the jurisdictions, including San Benito, was a requirement that cities submit an audit reporting to both the federal office of management and budgets as well as the state controller’s office.
According to a letter from the state controller’s office to the city of Shasta, one of the denied jurisdictions: “HCD’s 2012 CDBG NOFA requires that grant applicants comply with OMB A-133 requirements for submitting annual audits. The NOFA does not include a requirement that grant applicants comply with SCO’s requirements for single audit reporting submissions.”
The HCD email sent to Arreola and other agencies offers the jurisdictions that were deemed ineligible because they did not submit the single audit report to the state controller’s office a chance to email the documents by June 15.
Arreola said that the county’s application will now be rated and scored with all the other applications.
