Citizen's Advisory Committee Meeting

I attended the Citizen’s Advisory Committee meeting on October 24th. The meeting began with an explanation of what the Citizen’s Advisory Committee does and what their purpose is. The Citizen’s Advisory Committee has a total of 14 members, all of whom are Hillsborough County citizens, and they are responsible for reviewing the Hillsborough County issues brought up by the County Commissioners or County Administrators.

The Committee then explained that the public would have two opportunities to speak about the meeting. Before moving forward, the Committee gave everyone their first opportunity to make comments. After giving a few seconds for someone to make a move to the podium, the Committee continued the meeting by proceeding to ask Valmarie Turner, Contracts Unit Manager for the Affordable Housing Office for Hillsborough County, to speak.

Turner started off by talking about the Affordable Housing Office, and she said that they are who provide opportunities for low income families that live in Hillsborough County. Not only do they provide the opportunity to buy an affordable home for the families, but they also provide community development opportunities; they also give three different federal and state grants.
With the economic problems within our Country, Turner began speaking about the housing foreclosures. A new program called the Neighborhood Stabilization Program will be a part of Hillsborough County. The new program has $3.92 billion to buy foreclosures, and Hillsborough County will be provided $19.1 million for their foreclosures. The new program is part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act which was enacted in July of this year. The idea of the new program is to provide a more stabilized community.

“Even though $19.1 million sounds like a lot of money, with the amount of foreclosures in our county, we had no choice but to designate target areas in order to make a difference,” Turner said.

Various partnerships would be formed thorough the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, and they would purchase foreclosed and abandoned properties in our county. The newly formed partnerships would go into targeted neighborhoods, which would be the neighborhoods that have the most foreclosed homes. The reason for this is to keep the neighborhoods in tack and in good condition. To my surprise, our county has already seen more than 15,000 foreclosures filed since January of this year.

Elba Garcia, “I am very excited about the new program, and my neighborhood is one of the target areas so I hope they come soon to give the neighborhood a facelift. Garcia was an audience member, and so was Elizabeth Barrett. Barrett was also excited about the new program, “I feel horrible for everyone that has had their homes foreclosed on them, but it has made it hard on the whole neighborhood too.” She said this because she and other neighbors have had to clean up surrounding properties.

Overall, I really enjoyed this meeting more than all other public meetings I have attended thus far. I think that this program can benefit our community in many ways! I’m excited about the improvements that Hillsborough Community is moving toward.