LIMA — A $432,000 “glitch” on an Excel spreadsheet for Lima’s Community Development Block Grant funds led to some heated discussion Monday at the Lima City Council meeting, and ultimately led to the community grant specialist administered by the United Way to be completely left out.
Lima Community Development Director Amy Sackman Odum said the glitch came from two stray cells not showing up on the spreadsheet that were multiplying carryovers from last year several times, causing it to appear that more funds were available. The problem was caught early in the process, but the issue quickly raised questions from some council members.
“I can’t wrap my mind around this,” said councilman Jesse Lowe. “The office gets paid too much money to miss that much money.”
Derry Glenn, who is chairman of the economic development committee, said the mistake could have had other effects, saying allocations may have been different.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” Glenn said. “A $400,000 glitch is not a laughing matter. As chairman of the committee, I feel bad that I didn’t catch it myself. I am glad it was caught up front, but this needs to be covered more thoroughly.”
In total, the city received $347,152 for the HOME Investment Partnership and roughly $1 million for other CDBG resources. City officials’ hands are mostly tied with HOME funding, but they have more leeway with CDBG resources. A total of $991,000 was requested for HOME programs and $1.9 million for CDBG funding. The HOME account had a $643,000 carryover from last year and CDBG funds had a carryover of $77,612. With carryover, HOME resources balanced out but many organizations figured to be left out due to requests nearly being double of what was available.
Odum said the community development office took full responsibility for the error, but that it was fortunate that the error was caught early in the process.
“None of the numbers were final when it was caught,” Odum said. “Fortunately, the staff caught it. Unfortunately, it shows the reality of the diminishing funds.”
As a result of the error, several allocation requests had to be adjusted. Lima Allen County Neighborhood In Partnership, which had requested $66,000, the Emergency Repairs program, which had requested $80,000 and the Wealth Preparation/Financial Literacy program, which had requested $25,000, all were cut completely out. LACNIP was able to absorb the hit due to a $50,000 grant received from the Wells Fargo Foundation announced the same day. However, the financial literacy program was left unfunded. Also, councilors elected to move $30,000 funding allocated for the grant writing program to emergency repairs.
Lowe said he felt the 20 percent allowed for administration with CDBG money was too much since administrators were being paid more for less work due to dwindling funds.
Odum countered that claim, saying the administrative burden does not change covering all the time and energy spent “whether it is $1 or $1 million.” She added that while 20 percent is set aside for administration annually, 20 percent is not ordinarily spent, pointing out last year’s 18 percent total as an example.
Glenn said he would just like to make sure such an error did not occur again.
“It needs to be checked out so this does not happen again,” Glenn said. “If there is a glitch, there could be other glitches. If it was my boss, the matter would be checked out. That is what we are asking for.”
The CDBG allocation proposal will have its final public hearing at the July 13 council meeting and will be approved at the July 27 meeting.
