Dear Friends,

As you likely know, North Carolina was recently awarded $1.4 billion from Congress that will flow through the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. This pot of money is called Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery or CDBG-DR, for short. It can be used for many purposes. You may also remember that the City of Asheville will receive a direct allocation of $225 million in CDBG-DR funding that is separate from the State's pot.

Both the State and the City have to develop Action Plans that describe how they will spend the money they receive. The City is hosting public meetings, and you can find out more information about those here. The State is just starting its public input process, and below are the meetings scheduled for around the region. You can also find more information here on the Dept. of Commerce's website.

I hope you can get to one of these meetings. The focus of the spending will be housing, infrastructure, and rebuilding the economy of the region, but there is more in the details.

Tuesday, Feb 18
2:00pm - 4:00pm
Isothermal Community College, Business Sciences Building, Room 15
286 ICC Loop, Spindale

Friday, Feb 21
10:00am - 12:00pm
Haywood County Historic Courthouse, 2nd floor, Waynesville

Monday, Feb 24
11:30am - 2:30pm
Office of Land of Sky Regional Council, 339 New
Leicester Highway, Suite 140, Asheville

Tuesday, Feb 25
10:00am - 12:00pm
High Country Regional Council Office, 468 New Market Blvd., Boone

Thursday, Feb 27
1:30pm - 3:30pm
Western Piedmont Council Office, 1880 2nd Avenue NW, Hickory

Friday, Feb 28
10:00am - 12:00pm
Centralina Regional Council Office, 10735 David T
Taylor Drive, Suite 250, Charlotte

All the best,
Julie