Weld County signs programmatic agreement with SHPO and Erie to speed CDBG home-rehab work

Weld County commissioners on March 10 approved Contract ID 9177, a programmatic agreement between Weld County, the town of Erie and the Colorado State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) to complete environmental review for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) single-family home rehabilitation work.

Elizabeth Relford, CDBG program manager, told commissioners the county awarded $167,000 for rehabilitation of 10 homes and that the programmatic agreement allows the county and the town to complete a single, collective environmental review rather than performing separate reviews for each house. "This programmatic agreement allows us to collectively do that review for all of the homes, and we create essentially a menu of all of the potential options to do minor rehabilitation within a $15,000 limit in this 1 agreement so that we don't have to do individual reviews for each home," Relford said.

Relford said the homes are typically in the historic areas of the communities and that the agreement was coordinated with SHPO and HUD. Once SHPO and other approvals are complete, the county can finish the environmental review and issue a notice to proceed for construction and contracting.

Commissioner Ross moved to approve Contract ID 9177; Commissioner Peppler seconded. The motion passed by voice vote.

The county described the agreement as the final step in the environmental review process for the town of Erie under the CDBG award. The arrangement is intended to keep the project cost-feasible by avoiding separate environmental reviews for each household and to allow the town to contract with a single vendor to perform the work under the $15,000-per-home cap.

Speakers on this item included Elizabeth Relford, CDBG Program Manager, and the commissioners who moved and seconded the measure.