An aerial view of the Broad Street Market, whose renovation the city hopes to fund with a USDA grant applied for earlier this year.
Six months into the administration of Mayor Eric Papenfuse, Harrisburg is beginning to see the fruits of a revitalized grants-writing process, according to city officials who spoke on the topic this morning in city hall.
Errol Newark, a grants manager in the office of financial management, said that from January to June of this year the city was awarded more than $1 million in grants from outside agencies, including two first-time awards in amounts totaling $110,000. Not included in that figure are applications pending for an additional half-a-million in grants which, Newark said, the Papenfuse administration identified and pursued for the first time this year.
The $1 million includes grants for projects in public safety, public works, tourism and parks and recreation. The vast majority of them—$924,300—were awarded on the basis of applications made under the previous administration of Mayor Linda Thompson. These include $466,998 in Dauphin County gaming funds for the purchase of a new fire engine; $78,843 for an upgrade to police information systems; $250,000 from the state Department of Environmental Protection for a leaf collection vehicle and a recycling truck; a $13,619 state fire grant for firefighting equipment; and $114,840 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for advanced firefighter training.
An additional $112,500 were applied for in 2014 under the Papenfuse administration, including two awards that the city pursued for the first time, Newark said. One was a $10,000 grant from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for assessing the condition of five city playgrounds. The other was a one-time award of $100,000 from the Hershey Harrisburg Regional Visitors Bureau.
The remaining $2,500 came from an application this year to Walmart, for a grant to help fund the renovation of the playground at 4th and Emerald streets uptown.
Joyce Davis, Mayor Papenfuse’s spokeswoman, suggested Monday that the recent awards reflect the new mayor’s leadership in the area of grant applications. She compared the $1 million figure with the $425,000 the city was awarded in grants in the first six months of 2013.
Newark, the grants manager, echoed this sentiment, though he suggested that Papenfuse’s real contributions would be felt in the months to come, as applications for newly identified grant opportunities began to show results.
“There are certain agencies I’d never heard about until this mayor came in,” Newark said. “New grants came to the table this year because of this administration’s priorities.”
Newark estimated that the city was on track to receive between $10 and $12 million in outside grants this year, in contrast to last year’s total of $7 million. Both figures include the $4.5 million in state grants to the city for public safety, a line item that the state legislature increased last year as Harrisburg and its advisors were negotiating the final pieces of the city’s recovery plan.
So far, in addition to those for which funds have already been awarded, the city has submitted applications this year for three large grants related to recreation and economic development. One is for another $148,450 from DCNR for the development of Reservoir Park. Another application, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is for a $99,999 rural business grant to help renovate the Broad Street Market in Midtown. A third is an application to the state Department of Community and Economic Development for $250,000, to be spent on equipment for the five playgrounds being assessed under the previously awarded DCNR grant.
Newark, who started working for the city in June of 2012, has worked on compliance issues for city governments since 1998. Most recently, he worked as the compliance manager for the city of Baltimore.
During his first six months in Harrisburg, Newark said, he focused on cleaning up the city’s grants program, which was then in deep disarray. Among the problems was the chronic delay in preparing an independent audit of city finances, which outside agencies rely on for assurance that their awards will be appropriately spent and accounted for.
“Who wants to give grants to a city without an audit?” Newark said. “I told my staff, ‘We’ve got to fix our house before we apply for grants.’”
On Monday, Newark attributed the grant program’s recent successes to a combination of these cleaning-house efforts in the last two years and the leadership of the new administration. “We’re reaping the rewards of these two factors,” he said.
The money from the Hershey Harrisburg Regional Visitors Bureau, in particular, shows how the Papenfuse administration has left no stone unturned in its quest for outside funding. Traditionally, the HHRVB has spent city tourism money—which comes from a tax on overnight lodging in Dauphin County—directly on bills supplied by the city in connection with an overall marketing campaign.
Recently, the bureau committed around $70,000 to the “Summer in the City” promotional campaign, which the Papenfuse administration has used to highlight Harrisburg’s seasonal arts and leisure offerings.
But months before that, Papenfuse wanted to ensure the city received its full share of tourism money, a portion of which Harrisburg is entitled to under county ordinance. Early in his term, he requested additional funds from the HHVRB, which the HHRVB awarded in the amount of $100,000. Ostensibly, the money was for marketing purposes, though it was not attached to any formal campaign and went directly to the city’s general fund.
“HHRVB views it as a one-time… allotment? process? A one-time…I can’t use the word ‘grant,’” Rick Dunlap, the bureau’s public relations director, said, adding that the bureau has no process for receiving or approving grants.
But Davis, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said that as far as the administration was concerned, the money was a grant. “That money did come to the city,” she said. “And we’re defining ‘grant’ as any money that came from a source outside the city.”
