Video/Podcast: How the 5-Year Consolidated Plan helps low- and moderate-income residents

By Colin Killian, Public Communications Director

In this week’s episode of “What’s Up, College Station?” Community Development Analyst Raney Whitwell discusses the City’s Five-Year Consolidated Plan, which unlocks federal grant funding to benefit low- and moderate-income residents. Whitwell encourages residents to participate in a public survey about the plan.

The “What’s Up, College Station?” podcast is available weekly via Podbean, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon/Audible. Please subscribe, rate, and recommend!

If you have a suggestion for a future topic or interview, email me at ckillian@cstx.gov. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Grace Hallowell:

What’s Up, College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell, and today I’m joined by Raney Whitwell, one of our community development analysts at the City of College Station. We have some important things to talk about today concerning the city’s five-year consolidated plan.

Raney Whitwell:

Thanks for having me. So, every five years, the City of College Station must complete a five-year consolidated plan, and that plan will help us unlock federal grant funding from HUD, which is Housing and Urban Development. So those funds can be used to help support our low and moderate-income residents.

Grace Hallowell:

It’s a very important plan that has a lot that goes into it to make sure it is accurate and beneficial for our residents here. And there’s a lot of opportunities for residents of College Station to be involved in the planning process.

Raney Whitwell:

Every plan we do, we really push hard for that public participation because we really want to know what our residents want and need in the city. The grant funding is very flexible. So it can be used for things such as public facilities, which would include parks and streets. It could be used for social service activities or housing.

And so if you want to get involved, we have several ways to tell us what you think. Right now we have a survey out. That survey will be out until mid-March, and you can find that survey on our website. And then we will also have a public hearing on March 18th at 6 p.m. in the Bush 4141 Room at City Hall.

Grace Hallowell:

And why is it so important, I know we touched on it a little bit, that the public gets involved with something like this?

Raney Whitwell:

It’s really important because these are your tax dollars at work, so we really want to know how the taxpayer wants their tax dollars spent. And once we get that feedback, we will use that to put the plan together and then we will have another public hearing in July to present it. And then at that time, if the plan is good, council will give us a thumbs up.

Or if they tell us to go back to the drawing board and fix it, we’ll do that too. But public participation and information informs our plans. So we plan our plans around the needs of our citizens and our taxpayers.

Grace Hallowell:

And housing is a very important thing that affects everybody in our community housing.

Raney Whitwell:

Housing, to be affordable, you shouldn’t spend more than 30% of your income on housing. In College Station, we’re seeing people spend up towards 50 to 60% of their income. So housing is very unaffordable, and these funds help people live where they work.

Grace Hallowell:

So where can people find out more? We said on the website as well as our social media accounts. And if people have questions, how can they contact you?

Raney Whitwell:

I’d love for anybody with a question to contact me. They can call me at (979) 764-3488, or they can email me at rwhitwell@cstx.gov.

Grace Hallowell:

Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Raney.

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