UCDD Surveying Residents for Grant Applications

UCDD will call local residents over the next few months, asking survey questions to assist with grant applications.

UCDD Executive Director Mark Farley said the agency will be asking demographic questions, including, but not limited to, race and annual income. Farley said the surveys will accompany the Community Development Block Grant applications, which help municipalities obtain funding for water, sewer, and fire station projects.

“One of the things that we have to do though is to prove if we are doing a waterline that the majority of the people being served through the Community Development Block Grant are either low or medium income,” Farley said. “So we have to do the surveys to be able to back that up and show to the federal government that this is in fact a qualifying group of citizens that we are serving.”

Farley said the Community Development Block Grant is highly competitive and the more people who complete the survey will bolster the application. Farley said these calls are not a scam and sometimes it may be a local department that reaches out.

“Sometimes do that internally with our own employees and then sometimes some of the communities will reach out to say the fire hall or a nonprofit group to assist them in that survey process,” Farley said.

Farley said if calls do not bring in enough results needed for the applications, UCDD will try other methods of contacting residents.

“We have from time to time gone door-to-door,” Farley said. “It just depends on if we are able to get enough surveys through a phone call or not. If we can’t or we are a little short then we will go out and knock on doors and will try and see if people will meet us there face to face.”

Farley said the survey will not ask for confidential information such as social security numbers or bank information. Farley said for smaller counties it is crucial for residents to complete the survey as those populations can often times be harder to gather enough information.