Community Development ("Regular Round")

Eligible Projects

CDBG "regular round" projects have a quality-of-life objective. CDBG applications may be submitted under one of the following categories:

  • Community Infrastructure
  • Community Revitalization
  • Public Health and Safety
  • Sewer System Improvements
  • Water System Improvements
  • Water/Sewer Line Extensions

Application Requirements

In addition to the federal regulations cited in the Overview, there are a number of state requirements that have been imposed on "regular round" projects, primarily in order to ensure that as many communities as possible are able to benefit from the CDBG program. These state regulations are as follows:

  • Applications may be submitted only once a year, typically in March.
  • Previous projects must be closed out before another application can be submitted.
  • Eligible cities, with the exception of metropolitan governments, or counties can submit only one application. Therefore, if there are competing needs in the community, the executive and legislative body must determine which need is most important and submit an application for only that project.
  • Maximum grants are $420,000 for non-construction projects, and $1,000,000 for construction projects. 

Community development grant rates are based on the ability-to-pay of the applicant as calculated by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee.

Overview of Evaluation Criteria

The "regular round" program operates on a point system that measures four factors.

Community need measures unemployment, poverty, and income levels in the applicant city or county and in the service area of the project. Each project is eligible for up to 100 points in community need.

Project need is a relative measure of the community need for the project being requested compared to similar projects that may be submitted. Project need is calculated differently for different kinds of projects (for example, a water project may measure bacteria content in the water, while a housing rehabilitation project uses the extent of deteriorated housing as a measure of need). Applications for water or sewer line and system improvement projects can receive up to 75 points in project need, while applications in the other funding category can receive a maximum of 50 points.

Project feasibility measures the adequacy of the design and engineering of the project. For line and system projects, feasibility is a threshold for approval as determined by the Department of Environment and Conservation; no points are assigned, but the project must be determined to be feasible. Applications for Community Infrastructure, Community Revitalization, and Public Health and Safety may receive up to 50 points for feasibility.

Project impact is a benefit/cost measure and compares the number of people being served and the amount of money being requested. Line and system projects can earn up to 100 points in project impact, while applications for Community Infrastructure, Community Revitalization, and Public Health and Safety may receive up to 50 points. Up to an additional 10 points in the project impact category are available if the application shows that the proposed project affects the community's economic development.

Project essentialness is used only in community livability projects in order to ensure that the those projects related to health and safety receive the greatest opportunity for funding. A maximum of 50 points is available in essentialness.

Project Rankings/Approvals

Projects are reviewed and scored based on the evaluation criteria and are arranged from highest to lowest based on the total number of points earned. Project approvals are based on these rankings.

It does not matter that some categories are eligible for more points than others, since the competition is within categories rather than among categories.

The governor's set-aside is reserved for projects for which there is an exceptionally high project need, but for other reasons (perhaps low unemployment and high income) did not rank high enough to be funded. If the governor's set-aside is not used, the $1 million is transferred to other project categories.