Disaster Planning Grants
Overview of Program
The Iowa Smart Planning: Local Comprehensive Planning Grant Program made available $1 million of supplemental disaster Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds provided through the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The grants are intended to support development and adoption of forward thinking comprehensive plans that will guide long-term recovery efforts and subsequent decisions that reduce existing or future development in disaster-risk areas. The Program is based on the Iowa Smart Planning Principles and local comprehensive planning guidance contained in Senate File 2389 and signed into law on April 26, 2010. The Smart Planning components of SF 2389 (Division VII), along with the Smart Planning Legislative Guide, can be found here: http://rio.iowa.gov/resources/legislation.html.
Program application and guidelines were released on July 13, 2010, and included a due date of Sept. 30, 2010, for submission. The Rebuild Iowa Office issued a press release to announce the program. Other interested organizations assisted with outreach, including the Iowa League of Cities, Iowa State Association of Counties, American Planning Association – Iowa Chapter, and the Iowa Association of Regional Councils. The application materials were posted to the Rebuild Iowa Office Web site. Applicants were eligible to apply for up to the lesser of $50,000 or 50% of plan production costs per participating governmental entity. Eligible applicants for this Program include any of the 85 counties that were declared Presidential disaster areas from the storms of 2008 (DR-1763), as well as any city government within those counties. Multi-jurisdictional applications were incentivized through the scoring process.
The Program received an enthusiastic response. A total of 51 applications, including 78 governmental units and eight multi-jurisdictional applications, were received from throughout the state. 38 projects were funded:
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