CDCs: City slashing money to neighborhoods

Patricia Garry and Michael Berry | Cincinnati

Patricia Garry is executive director of the CDC Association of Greater Cincinnati, and Michael Berry is president.

Look around. Have you noticed that Cincinnati is changing? Where buildings once sat vacant and falling down, new structures are standing tall and bustling with activity. Where vacant lots once were overgrown with dense grass and vines, new apartments have sprung up. Where communities once sat ignored, people are unable to find a parking spot because they are so packed.

This change is for the better, and it is benefiting Cincinnati and all of our surrounding neighbors. People are choosing to move here because of the improvement, and that only means better things are around the corner for us.

Often overlooked in this positive change is the impact of Community Development Corporations (CDCs) in making it a reality. CDCs come into existence when a neighborhood creates a vision for what they want to become and then those CDCs begin to make that vision a reality.

You can see that vision becoming a reality every day for many of our neighborhoods because of CDCs.

CDCs are nonprofit entities that are made up of members of the community they represent. You may be a board member for one of these groups or you may have a neighbor on the board. These organizations are organically grown by the neighborhood, of the neighborhood, for the neighborhood.

Those board and staff members commit countless hours of their time and energy to making that vision for their neighborhood a reality. They are often in meetings until late in the evening advocating on behalf of their neighborhood and putting together the deals that make developments like the Trevarren Flats in Walnut Hills, Abington Flats in Over-the-Rhine, Mount Airy Square in Mount Airy and Marlowe Court in College Hill come together.

They're not doing this to turn a profit for themselves. These CDCs do their work to make their neighborhoods better and to create the community their neighborhood wants to become. Without the hard work of these groups over the last 50 years, Cincinnati would have become just another Rust Belt city like Detroit. To say CDCs have proven their worth in that time is an understatement.

At Monday's Budget and Finance Committee meeting, council members will vote on whether to cut funding to CDCs throughout our entire city. Development officials claim budget cuts as their excuse for slashing 36.5 percent of funding to all of our local CDCs. This will cripple our ability to continue the momentum for Cincinnati that we have all worked so hard to build. Of the groups receiving cuts to their funding from the federal CDBG and HOME programs, the average cut would have been 5.5 percent. Only we were cut more than 30 percent.

Budget cuts would become a thing of the past if the city stopped cutting funding to the groups that are providing ROI on all of our developments.

It's time that the city and our elected leaders stopped talking about helping neighborhoods, while cutting them at every turn, and started truly making this the "Year of the Neighborhoods."

Op-ed submitted on behalf of Ken Smith, Price Hill Will; Kevin Wright, Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation; Mary Burke Rivers, Over-the-Rhine Community Housing; Michael Cappel, College Hill Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation; Ozie Davis III, Avondale Comprehensive Development Corporation; Paul Rudemiller, Camp Washington Community Board; Rob Sheil, Cornerstone Corporation for Shared Equity; Sara Sheets, Madisonville Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation; Seth T. Walsh, Sedamsville Community Development Corporation; Sister Barbara Busch, Working in Neighborhoods; and Stefanie Sunderland, Cincinnati Northside Community Urban Development Corporation.

If you go

Cincinnati City Council's Budget and Finance Committee meets at noon Monday at City Hall, 801 Plum St. A proposed cut to community development corporations' funding is expected to be discussed.

If you go

Cincinnati City Council's Budget and Finance Committee meets at noon Monday at City Hall, 801 Plum St. A proposed cut to community development corporations' funding is expected to be discussed.