Council to Decide How Funds Will Be Divided : Simi Valley: Nearly $5.5 million in earthquake relief is available. The public is invited to hearing.

The Simi Valley City Council will hold a public hearing tonight--a month after the city received an unexpected $5.5 million windfall for earthquake relief--to decide how to spend the funds.

The money is Simi Valley’s share of $127 million in Community Development Block Grants paid by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to 11 cities and two counties hit hard by the Jan. 17 earthquake.

Homes and businesses in Simi Valley suffered more than $400 million in quake-related damage.

Residents are invited to comment on the city’s plan to spend the relief funds at a public hearing tonight at Simi Valley City Hall. Following the 6:30 p.m. hearing, the council will vote on how to divvy up the funds.

If the council approves its staff’s recommendations, the bulk of the funding--about $4.7 million--will be spent to repair streets and city buildings, construct new homes and offer assistance to residents whose homes were damaged in the quake.

“What we tried to do was identify the key areas throughout the city in need of help,” said Laura Herron, a deputy city manager who coordinated the staff report. “It really took a lot of juggling, because even though it seems like a lot of money, there are still more projects than we have funding for.”

Staff is recommending that a homeowner assistance program be established to offer grants of up to $2,000 to residents whose homes were deemed uninhabitable or severely damaged by the earthquake.

Inspectors have posted red tags on 51 homes they determined are structurally unsafe and yellow tags on 524 homes that are severely damaged.

But Councilwoman Judy Mikels said she would like to see homeowner assistance expanded to include other residents as well.

“Just to say it’s yellow-tagged or red-tagged isn’t the criteria we should be going by,” Mikels said. “There are people with lesser damage who may not be able to get financial assistance any other way.”

The staff is recommending that an additional $600,000 pay for other projects to improve the city’s ability to cope with quakes. These include replacing the city’s phone system and picking up part of the cost of a soil stability study.

Herron said the phone system is inadequate to handle the onslaught of calls to the city during emergencies.

“It’s a 10-year-old system that just can’t perform when the volume of calls goes way up,” she said. “We’ve heard a lot of concern about getting something in place that can handle emergencies.”

But the bulk of the hearing will likely focus on how to allocate $226,000 available for other earthquake-related projects.

The city received 21 applications totaling $1.7 million from businesses and nonprofit organizations ranging from the Moose Lodge to Southern California Water Co.

An additional $1 million of the block grant money may be freed for earthquake projects if the city is able to persuade the Federal Highway Administration to pay a portion of the cost for road repair.

If the additional $1 million becomes available, the city will hold a second public hearing, Herron said.

For now, however, City Council members must decide which projects are most worthy of the $226,000 in guaranteed funding.

City Council members said they would spend the weekend scrutinizing the projects and preparing questions for tonight’s hearing before deciding which ones to select.

“It’s an awful lot of money and it looks like we’ve attracted everybody in the world,” Mayor Greg Stratton said. “There are, I think, a whole bunch of people that are not going to be consistent with the guidelines for this funding.”

Southern California Water submitted the largest request--$600,000 to repair damaged water tanks.

The private company, which serves about 12,000 customers in Simi Valley, is ineligible for funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Stratton said.

But he said it may not be prudent for the city to award the grant.

“They did not have earthquake insurance to cover their damage,” Stratton said. “If we give them this money, it’s like giving them a gift when maybe they should have been better prepared for this.”

Councilwoman Sandi Webb said she has already ruled out at least two applicants: Bottle Village and the Samaritan Center.

Bottle Village is a folk-art collection of miniature buildings constructed of bottles. Ongoing deterioration at the village was exacerbated by the earthquake. The village is asking for $25,000 for earthquake repairs.

“I just think it may be too far gone to be worth saving,” Webb said. “We haven’t had the kind of community interest that would merit spending that kind of money.”

The Samaritan Center is a drop-in center for homeless people that is scheduled to open at St. Francis of Assisi Church in June.

Brent Brentnall, president of the center’s board of directors, said the earthquake has increased the number of homeless people in Simi Valley.

Brentnall said the center will not be able to open on time unless it can come up with $80,000 to finish refurbishing two buildings at the church.

“We are at a crucial point now,” he said. “If we don’t get this money from somewhere, we are not going to be able to open.”

But Webb said she would rather spend the quake relief money on fixing damaged homes to help prevent residents from becoming homeless.

“There are some people out there who are going to become homeless if we don’t do something to help them,” she said. “That seems to me to be a good way to tackle the problem.”

Simi Valley Earthquake Funding

The Simi Valley City Council will consider allocating nearly $5.5 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds for earthquake relief. Here is the spending formula recommended by city staff:

$1.8 million: Re-pave portions of Los Angeles Avenue and Tapo, Cochran, Stearns and Alamo streets.

$1.15 million: Establish grant fund to assist residents whose homes were severely damaged in the quake.

$700,000: Loan to Griffin Industries to build 70 low-income homes to help replace housing damaged in the quake.

$600,000: Set aside for future development projects that will help replace housing damaged in the quake.

$450,000: Repair and upgrade the city’s phone system to better handle emergencies.

$150,900: Salaries for two years for two staff members to ad minister the grant program.

$275,000: Street repairs, including curbs, gutters, sidewalks and block walls along residential streets.

$226,000: Available for distribution for other earthquake-related projects.

$120,000: City share of cost of repairing block walls along main thoroughfares.

$25,000: City share of cost for repairs to police station, City Hall and senior center.

$2,100: City share of cost for soil stability study being conducted by state Department of Mines and Geology.