NMHC adopts amendments to Citizen Participation Plan

Amendments on the Citizen Participation Plan have been adopted by the Northern Marianas Housing Corp.

NMHC board of directors passed a resolution on the amendments made by the corporation on the CPP.

The CPP sets forth NMHC’s policies and procedures for citizen participation in the planning, implementation, and assessment of its Community Planning Development funds for the Community Development Block Grant, Home Investment Partnership Program, and the Emergency Solutions Grant programs.

According to NMHC deputy director Zenie Mafnas, there are two amendments on the CPP.

The first one is the language on reprogramming eligible funds to be available during times of disaster.

“Whenever a disaster is declared, an amendment to the consolidated plan will not be considered as ‘substantial.’ Again, this is all due to Typhoon Soudelor, all the agencies, the Governor’s Office was asking what can CDBG do in this recovery effort. So we added that language in case we have another disaster and CDBG funding was going to be used for recovery efforts,” Mafnas said.

An amendment or change that is considered “substantial” needs public notices to be published that would be open for public comments for 30 days before submission.

The plan states that the public notice for the reprogrammed funds will be published at a later date.

“Due to the immediate urgency of a disaster situation, the NMHC will publish a notice at a later date to inform its citizens of a reprogramming of funds,” the CPP states.

Another CPP amendment was setting an amount for a change to be considered “substantial.”

Mafnas said that prior times they would always go to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to ask if they need to issue out notices if they would reprogram certain funds.

HUD then advised them to amend their CPP.

“The old plan doesn’t have a dollar threshold meaning how much dollar value will constitute a substantial amendment,” Mafnas said.

The revised CPP now states that, “Whenever there is a need to reprogram funds in the amount greater than $50,001,the NMHC will publish a notice of Reprogramming of Funds to the public for comments for a period of thirty days (30).”

“Anything below that threshold, we can just directly send HUD a reprogramming request. We noticed in planning that 30 days is really a long time. We can do a lot of things in that 30 days instead of just waiting around for that comment period to be over, especially if we need to use the funds immediately,” Mafnas said.

The CPP amendments were published for public comments for 15 days but no comments were received by NMHC.

Mafnas said the plan is a standard document and that it adheres to HUD regulations.

The board unanimously voted “yes” for the amendments to be adopted.