The City Council’s Housing Committee is pictured as Crystal Surdyk, city development director, discusses updates on HUD funding along with the comprehensive plan and rental inspections. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

A few months ago, a major concern for the Department of Development was whether or not it would see any funding from the federal Housing and Urban Development department amid uncertainty over federal budget cuts.

During Monday’s City Council Housing Committee meeting, Crystal Surdyk, city development director, said that funding has been received by the city.

“We were waiting on our annual allocation of our HUD funding,” Surdyk said. “We got it last week. We’ve already had that plan approved, we submitted our Annual Action Plan and Five-Year Consolidated Plan to HUD, so this will kind of be business as usual, which is actually really good.”

Surdyk said the city will be getting some HOME funding with some projects already in the works and there will be CDBG funding that they will start to announce once some of those grants become available.

Surdyk also updated the Housing Committee members on the ongoing Comprehensive Plan project, saying the team met last week and they have been presented with a draft land use plan. The team met as a staff the day after the Housing Committee meeting to go over that and send suggestions back to the group for any revisions. Surdyk said once there is a more finalized draft they will be able to begin sharing that. There will also be another public meeting in the next few months.

One other item that Surdyk discussed with the committee was the Rental Inspection forms that have been put online. This is something that has already been passed and something Surdyk said the department has been pushing online and on social media.

“So I guess I just wanted to use this opportunity to remind people that it is a requirement, and it’s really easy to submit your information,” Surdyk said.

It is also required for a rental building to be registered every year, but Surdyk said an inspection is something different. People can schedule them themselves, which is something Surdyk said would be ideal, or the Department of Development will schedule them. They are also coordinating with the county for lead inspections.

“They are mandated to administer the state lead inspections, so once they have received their guidance through the state we will have a better idea of how we are going to be able to tag team our inspections and try to make it a more efficient process for both of our agencies,” Surdyk said.

Surdyk said she is encouraging landlords to get their registration submitted, adding that this is not just something that helps the department to know who they are but it also helps the landlords for cases such as if there was a fire at one of their units then the city would know who to contact, and that it is not just for code violations.