Arapahoe County Commissioners learned federal funding for community development block grants would be cut about 16 percent, which is an improvement over the expected reductions of more than 40 percent.

Representatives of the county community development department provided the latest information about the reduced cuts at the April 19 study session and then requested direction from the commissioners on how to use the expected funds.

The commissioners approved the development department’s funding proposal to fund priority projects and that will be presented April 26 as an introduction to the public hearing on the issue.

The commissioners will conduct the public hearing on the community development block grant funding proposal at 9:30 a.m. in the east hearing room at the Arapahoe County Administration Building, 5334 S. Prince St. in Littleton.

Don Klemme, community resources director, said a decision on the use of community block development grant money has been pending for a while but he said his department had requested repeated postponements in hope there would be firm information on funding.

However, now a decision must be made because the county community resources department must file a plan on how the money will be used with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The plan will be used by HUD to determine the exact amount of community development block grant money Arapahoe County will receive.

Last year, the county received about $1.1 million and the city of Centennial received about $300,000. Centennial is funded separately because it is a city of more than 100,000 people.

“We assumed a 16 percent cut in funding in each of the two categories, public service and public facilities,” said Karinne Wiebold, community development administrator. “We established criteria to rank the requests and our recommendation is to fund the top programs on the list.”

Commissioner Nancy Jackson thanked the staff for how they dealt with a difficult situation.

“It is just heartbreaking to have to determine which of these projects received funding because all are programs helpful to our residents and there are so many needs requesting funding,” she said.

The proposal would fully fund the top priority requests and hold the rest on the list to be funded if additional money becomes available.