 - The Fremont County Commission has agreed to sponsor a community development block grant application that Riverton’s Mercy House homeless shelter intends to submit to the Wyoming Community Development Authority this month.){kind=link}
(Lander, WY) – The Fremont County Commission has agreed to sponsor a community development block grant application that Riverton’s Mercy House homeless shelter intends to submit to the Wyoming Community Development Authority this month.
Mercy House Vice Chair Scott Komrs said the money would be used to demolish an unused building on the property so that a new structure, or structures, could be built in its place.
Currently, he explained, the nonprofit organization houses its male and female clients on opposite ends of one building.
In the future, however, Komrs said Mercy House would like to expand to provide clients with “separate facilities – a male facility and female facility,” with an administrative building in between that is accessible by both units.
“We’ve had a lot of requests for that,” Komrs said, adding that organizers are also contemplating building “smaller structures (on) the back side of the larger ones, for small family units.”
He also noted that Riverton was unable to sign on as the grant sponsor because the city is already serving in that capacity on behalf of two other local WCDA grant recipients.
4-1 vote
The grant application is due Sept. 27, Fremont County Treasurer Jim Anderson told the Commission this week, offering to “step up (and) be the point person on the county side of things to run this grant through us.”
“We will be the grant recipient, essentially, and Mercy House will be (the) beneficiary,” he explained. “(So) we’ll be the ones actively monitoring the financial side of it.”
Commissioner Clarence Thomas had questions about that arrangement.
For example, he wondered “how much responsibility” the county would have if “something negative occurred” with the grant.
He also asked whether the grant program would provide the county with funding to cover the administrative costs associated with the funding.
The answer to the second question was “no.”
“It did say that administrative costs are not allowed,” Anderson said.
Thomas characterized the situation as the county “doing things for free.”
Later, he voted against the motion to sign the letter of intent to apply for the grant.
The motion passed 4-1.