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ARDEN HILLS CITY COLINCIL WORK SESSION _ JANUARY 13.2025 were responsible for coming up with the other half. This program can stay the same this year. We got less funds. But you can have people getting 50% of the money and still help. She said just because someone has lived in a house for 40 years doesn't mean their income is low. Councilmember Weber asked how much we applied for last year,thatwe ended up getting s45,000. Director of Public Works/City Engineer Swearingen it was between $70,000-$80,000. Councilmember Weber asked if the equity component had an impact on the grant amount. Director of Public Works/City Engineer Swearingen said no. Some cities appear to be exaggerating their numbers to get a bigger slice. He said Crystal requested $750,000. Minneapolis and St. Paul were at $ 1.5 million each. So they get a larger chunk. We tried to take a more honest approach. Councilmember Weber asked if he felt like an equity component would have made a difference in the amount received? Not necessarily to the application process, but to either going through applications quicker or narrowing it down. It sounds like ten people qualified. Ten people got it. Director of Public Works/City Engineer Swearingen said it is first come, first served. If we have applicants who meet the equity component earlier in the process, we would run out of money sooner. There is plenty of interest. We just don't have a lot of funds to begin with. It's lower than what we requested. Councilmember Weber said he would not support an equity component. If it won't make a difference on the amount we are receiving. Mayor Grant said then we wouldn't have income information at City Hall. Councilmember Monson would support not having an equity component. If the program grows, she would like to revisit it. The challenge is if you get someone in the lower AMI paperwork becomes even more challenging. The support to get someone across the line would be significant from staff. That would be a whole different strategy from now, which is just deploy the money and fix this environmental issue. She can get behind not having an equity component but will want to revisit it if we grow. Councilmember Holden agrees. She said next year when we reapply, we look at it again. Mayor Grant said we will award S41,000. He asked if anything on the calculations should change. We're at 50o/o of the first $5,000. Interim City Administrator Jagoe confirmed up to $5,000. Mayor Grant asked if Staff feels like we will use the $41,000 at that level. Director of Public Works/City Engineer Swearingen confirmed. Councilmember Weber asked how quickly it would be used. t4