Juliet's House seeks CDBG funding to buy neighboring building to expand child-abuse services

Juliet's House asked Yamhill County commissioners on Aug. 6 to support a Community Development Block Grant application to acquire an adjacent office building and expand services for children who have been abused or neglected.

Russell Mark, representing Juliet's House, said the purchase would allow the nonprofit to expand assessment services and create a trauma-informed drug-exposure collection service for children: "This grant will allow us to do that and to expand the services, our our assessment services, along with creating a trauma informed, drug or or collection, laboratory for kids who have been exposed to drugs." He said the group hopes to co-locate other agencies in the building and described the acquisition as a step toward a family justice center for the county.

Martha Chapa of Business Oregon, the state agency that administers the block grant program, told commissioners the county would be the applicant and recipient and that family resource centers are an eligible community-facilities project type. She cautioned that an acquisition-only project that is turnkey does not trigger prevailing-wage rules or the most intensive NEPA environmental reviews; "A project that's acquisition and rehabilitation would trigger that more difficult environmental review and the need to pay prevailing wages," she said. She also said the county must document that tenants serve eligible low- and moderate-income populations and offered templates and examples from prior projects.

Commissioners pressed on practical issues. Commissioner Stewart said she would approach the request from the board's fiduciary responsibilities and asked for clarity on internal staffing, liability and how rehabilitation costs would be funded later. "My questions and my decisions would come from a position of fiduciary responsibility for the board of commissioners," she said. Commissioners asked county staff (Ken) to estimate internal administrative costs and agreed to post a public hearing notice and revisit the item on Aug. 20 so the board could approve the application and the hearing minutes before the state's intake deadline.

Business Oregon said the grant cycle opened July 1 and closes Sept. 30, with a pre-application/intake due by the end of August and a full application due Sept. 30. Chapa recommended publishing a notice and holding the required hearing promptly: "You need to publish that notice and then have the hearing next week, probably, soon." The board agreed to pursue the intake timeline while staff returns cost estimates.

Next steps: commissioners asked staff to provide a ballpark estimate of the county's internal costs, to publish the public hearing notice and to consider formal approval of the application at the Aug. 20 meeting.