3/21/07 Grant application targets city’s South End

(As published by Cortland Standard,Evan Geibel reporting)

The city will be applying for $650,000 in state grant money that would be directed toward improving the South End, for which a strategic plan has recently been completed and posted online.
The Common Council authorized the mayor to sign the grant application at its meeting Tuesday night. The council also discussed a city tax exemption for seniors and at its meeting.
The 2007 Community Development Block Grant application includes $100,000 for single-family housing rehabilitation, $175,000 for multi-family housing rehabilitation, $75,000 for multi-family homeownership, $50,000 for microenterprise assistance, $18,000 for funds to pay for overtime hours for city code officers to work in the South End, as well as $40,000 for public improvements to streets and sidewalks.
Improvements to the sewer and water system on Pierce Street and improvements to the water system on Winter Street have been allocated $75,000 in the application. This would also include repaving Pierce and Winter streets, and South Avenue, with the grant paying for materials and rental equipment and the city footing the labor bill.
Installation of sidewalks and planting of trees on the south side of South Avenue would be included in the grant. The work would cost $20,000.
The full text of the South End Strategic Plan draft is available online at www.thomadevelopment.com.
At the insistence of Alderman Jim Partigianoni (D-7th Ward), the council discussed the city’s senior citizen tax exemption, which is also given to low-income disabled.
Council members talked about how cost of living increases in Social Security checks could push some people over the current $20,000 income cap on eligibility.
Right now, those who make $14,300 or less a year can receive a 50 percent tax exemption, continuing until those who make between $19,101 and $20,000 receive only a 20 percent tax exemption.
Under Partigianoni’s alternative plan, increments allowing for 15, 10 and 5 percent tax exemptions would be added to the top of the current income ranges, meaning that a senior or disabled person who earns between $21,801 and $22,700 would receive a 5 percent exemption.
City Assessor David Briggs had recommended the increase to Partigianoni, who said he had been told that the impact on the other city taxpayers of implementing this program would be minimal.