ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701150078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
AND IT'S A LONG LIST. At a hearing on how to spend federal money, there didn't seem enough to go around.
Roanoke's social needs are so vast that in a half-hour Tuesday night, residents dreamed up causes that would easily soak up 10 times the $2.3 million in federal grants the city expects next fiscal year.
For example: Day care for mothers soon to be forced off welfare and into jobs. More community-oriented policing. More villagelike shopping centers within neighborhoods. More anti-drug police workers in elementary schools. More positive hangouts for poor kids like Patterson Avenue's West End Center.
"We don't want you to leave here with unrealistic expectations," Frank Baratta, the city's grants monitor, warned the dozens of crusading neighborhood leaders and social service workers who barraged a public hearing with the dire wants of Roanokers.
But there was no stopping the recitation of needs. Just one group - the Loudon/Melrose Neighborhood Organization - could mop up much of the city's home rehabilitation budget, said Lindsey Martin, the group's president.
The city has already surpassed its five-year goal of using federal money to build 25 new homes. It helped build 33 in the first year.
Rehabilitation of old homes is proceeding more slowly - only three abandoned homes were rescued, repaired and resold in the last year, according to a city document handed out at the hearing. The city also helped another dozen new homeowners rehabilitate substandard homes.
Baratta reminded the crowd at Jefferson Center that housing takes a deep bite out of the city's federal dollars.
Even so, the crowd seemed adamant that the city should be spending a full 15 percent of its federal grants on human services - a separate category from housing and including job training, family services and counseling of pregnant teens. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allows jurisdictions to use no more than 15 percent of its grants for human services, but Baratta estimated that Roanoke spends only about 12 percent of its federal money that way.
Officers with the Roanoke Police Department also solicited ideas Tuesday night for how to spend a $120,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. An advisory board is being created to guide the spending of that money.
Expansion of community-oriented policing and establishment of a youth advocacy agency to work within schools, courts and homes were two of a dozen ideas promptly proposed for how to use the money.
Harriet Lewis, executive director of the YWCA of the Roanoke Valley, urged those at the hearing to start thinking about poor families' needs, which are expected to mushroom this fall when the Roanoke and New River valleys begin complying with Gov. George Allen's welfare-to-work plan.
Proposals for federally funded projects in Roanoke are due Feb. 10. For information, call 853-6003.
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