Frozen funds

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Updated: December 10, 2011 8:05AM

The federal grant funds that enable Naperville to assist low-income residents and pay for affordable housing and infrastructure development remain unavailable for those purposes.

Suspended more than six months ago, the city’s allocation of Community Development Block Grant funds is being withheld until the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is satisfied with the city’s response to audit findings earlier this year.

“We’re still going to be frozen. We have to get back to them,” City Manager Doug Krieger said Monday.

He met late last week in Chicago with officials from HUD, who laid out what remains to be done by the city for the program funds to be released at last.

The money, some $393,000 in all, subsidizes the work of organizations such as the Loaves & Fishes Community Pantry, Naperville CARES (Community Acting in Response to Economic Stress) and other entities that assist residents struggling with monetary hardship.

Krieger said HUD representatives requested additional documentation to clear up questions over the sequencing of agreements, environmental reviews and other data for the agency’s Integrated Disbursement and Information System. The nationwide database furnishes the local programming details HUD needs to keep Congress abreast of where the money is going.

The program has been in limbo since last spring, shortly after program coordinator Katie Wernberg left the city staff, under circumstances Krieger declined to discuss. He said at the time that HUD was requiring the city to demonstrate it has the capacity to maintain the program. The City Council several weeks ago hired Anna Straczek to replace Wernberg.

Charles McLimans, Loaves & Fishes’ executive director and CEO, sees the city’s compliance with the request from HUD as a work in progress.

“We are still hopeful,” McLimans said Tuesday. “They’re working hard at the city to get some funds, but we still have not received any word on this.”

The hunger relief organization, which has seen its client base swell 60 percent over the past year, planned to use its Community Development Block Grant allocation to help cover the cost of its new facility on High Point Drive. Instead, an additional loan had to be secured from the Illinois Facilities Fund, a community lender and consultant that serves the state’s nonprofits.

“What was really disheartening was we were rewarded this large amount of money that was allocated to us, and because of that, our social services funding was reduced from $60,000 to $27,000,” McLimans said. “We are working overtime to trying to make up for that deficit.”

The loss of city-administered grant funds also has required the pantry to rely on private sources to support its home delivery program.

“We may have to look at the scope of the program if funding doesn’t materialize soon, but the program is still operational,” Jody Bender, the pantry’s community relations director, said in an email.

If the grant funds don’t come through within the next few weeks, McLimans said the pantry might have to distribute groceries monthly instead of every two weeks, as it does now.

Nobody wants to see that happen. The city is due to furnish the requested information to HUD by next Tuesday, Krieger said.

“Based on our meeting last Friday, I think we have enough information to draft our final response.”