Kitsap County outlines consolidated plan, funding sources and timeline during Port Orchard work session

Kitsap County staff presented the county's five-year consolidated plan and related grant processes to the Port Orchard City Council during a Feb. work study session, describing the federal and local funding streams that support housing, public services and capital projects and outlining opportunities for city input.

The presentation said the county receives Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding annually from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to support affordable housing, economic development and community facilities that primarily benefit people at or below 80% of area median income. "We receive about $1,000,000 annually," the presenter said. The county also manages HOME Investment Partnership funds for permanent affordable housing and a county'wide Community Investments in Affordable Housing fund (CF funds) that combines sales-and-use-tax proceeds from participating jurisdictions; the CF funds were described as adding roughly $5,500,000 to the local capital pool each year.

Kitsap County staff explained that cities have the option to stay part of the county'managed urban-county entitlement, or to decline and seek funds through the state process. Staff described the entitlement interlocal agreements as auto-renewing and said cities that decline county participation limit their ability to use county-administered funds for projects within city limits.

The consolidated plan is a five-year strategic document that sets priorities and spending guidelines for HUD and related funds. Staff outlined the schedule and public-engagement steps: policy plans and a 15-day public comment period and hearing in May; a coordinated grant application process opening in June and closing in mid-July via an online platform; scoring and deliberations by the Capital Grant Recommendation Committee in August and September; late-September funding recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners; and submission of the consolidated plan and annual action plan to HUD in November.

Staff urged local participation in two ways: appointing representatives to the grant recommendation committee and contributing to outreach and needs assessments. Staff said the committee includes representatives from each city and commissioner district; the county evaluates applications for eligibility and requests intent forms early in the process to guide applicants. The presentation also noted the annual Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER), which reports outcomes to HUD and is produced each year as a companion to the five-year consolidated plan.

Staff described common eligible activities (housing acquisition and rehabilitation, sidewalk and complete-street projects, public services and economic development micro-enterprise support) and stressed HUD's low- and moderate-income benefit requirement: a project must either be located in an eligible low-income census tract or document income qualification or presumed benefit for targeted populations. Staff cited a recent successful streets-and-sidewalks project in which the program's neighborhood-income data enabled a contiguous sidewalk connection to qualify for funding.

County staff encouraged Port Orchard to submit reports, studies and local priorities for inclusion in the needs assessment and said the public survey was live with early response counts provided. They also noted that some funds (HOME and CF) carry more administrative requirements; HUD-funded programs require environmental review, Davis-Bacon prevailing-wage compliance, Build America Buy America compliance, Section 3 considerations and other federal rules that increase the administrative burden on small grantees.

The presentation closed by asking council members to identify local agencies and stakeholders for outreach and to consider appointments to the county committee that evaluates capital grants.

Port Orchard councilors and staff asked questions about participation options, how allocations are determined, which local representatives handle housing and services (councilors were told Chris Stansbury handles housing capital allocations and that Lee Higgs will represent services this year) and how the county integrates HUD data with more current sources such as Zillow. Staff said they will publish shorter summaries of lengthy technical documents (an eight-page priority summary and a four-page CAPER summary) to aid public review.

The county requested that the city forward any recent studies or reports for incorporation into the consolidated-plan needs assessment and encouraged civic engagement during the May-through-September grant cycle.