New Philadelphia, Ohio (WJER) - Tuscarawas County officials are beginning a new round of funding for the Community Development Block Grant Program. 

Economic Development Director Scott Reynolds says they will be holding their first public hearing to accept applications for this round of funding April 15th at 10:30 am in the commissioners' board room. He says it’s federal money they distribute to communities throughout the county for projects like sidewalk and curb installations, street repair, and flood and drainage improvements.

“That money actually gets back to where people live every day,” he says. “It’s a really good way to get the federal dollars back to serve the people that it came from in the first place.”

This will be the second round of funding for the county on the state’s new regiment, which distributes CDBG money once every two years. Reynolds says this round amounts to about $340,000.

“They did give us a little bit of an increase over a single year's funding but not a tremendous increase,” he says. “We’re probably working with maybe one and a third of the money per year than what we would have had.”

Reynolds says CDBG funding has been slowly regaining ground after being drastically cut between 2005 and 2012.

WJER RADIO