By Paula Schleis, Beacon Journal staff writer
March 28, 2011

Reprinted with permission from the Akron Beacon Journal and Ohio.com, March 19, 2011

Like inner-city neighborhoods around the country, Akron’s oldest residential neighborhood of Middlebury was helpless against the flight of businesses and retailers from this poor and aging section east of downtown. For years, the folks who lived here had to travel miles for basic amenities, like groceries. But in 2004, a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) did what nothing else could. A nearly $1 million gift from the federal program helped kick'start the building of Middlebury Marketplace, a shopping center that brought the vendors back.

On Friday, local Democratic leaders stood outside the anchor of the center — Dave’s Supermarket — to remind Congress what’s at stake as it considers a 2011 budget passed by the Republican-controlled House that would slash the CDBG program by 62 percent. U.S Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Rep Betty Sutton, D-Copley Township; and Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic agreed belt-tightening is necessary in tough economic times. ‘’But every cut is not the same,’’ Sutton said, and hindering a program that creates jobs and fuels economic development doesn’t make sense.

Established in 1975, CDBG is one of the longest-running programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and funds local community-development activities, from affordable housing to infrastructure development. Plusquellic said the program is a recognition that people pay taxes and send the money to Washington, and it comes back to better their communities. ‘’So often people are told that these are programs that are ‘socialistic,’ but this is a very real private-sector business employing people in the private sector,’’ Plusquellic said of Dave’s Supermarket. ‘’I only hope the right-wingers listen, ‘cause this is a business-oriented, helping-people-to-help-themselves’’ investment.

The grocer has 60 full-time and 120 part-time workers, who contribute $100,000 a year in income tax that helps pay for city services like police and fire, the mayor said. Grady Appleton, director of the East Akron Neighborhood Development Corp., said his group tried for nine years to get a grocer to the area. The federal money finally gave the project clout and leveraged other public and private funding, he said.

Under the current House proposal, Ohio communities that shared in $174 million in CDBG funds last year would have to fight for part of a $66 million pool proposed for this fiscal year. The $3.8 billion proposed for the entire country for 2011 is a fraction of the $5 billion spent every month by the U.S. government to help rebuild Iraq, Plusquellic said. ‘’I’m not arguing about federal aid to foreign places... If that’s necessary, I understand that,’’ he said. But spending some of those taxpayer dollars on American cities ‘’is an investment well worth it,’’ he said.

Earlier this week, a report by The U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties sought to quantify what the CDBG program has done for job creation in the country. Researchers studied ten cities — including Akron — and concluded that the CDBG created 147,000 jobs in a six-year period, accounting for $13 billion annually in gross domestic product.

In Akron’s case, the study found Akron used $8.4 million in CDBG funds between 2003 and 2008, creating the equivalent of 243 jobs. Those jobs annually make $12 million in wages, which contribute $1.4 million in state and local income taxes, and generate $18 million to the gross metro product, the report said.