TIFTON — The City of Tifton has enlisted the aid of Grant Specialists of Georgia to prepare an application for the upcoming Community Development Block Grant.

In a special called meeting Dec. 19, city council voted unanimously to appoint Grant Specialists as their grant administrators for preparing the city’s app for the CDBG.

Crystal Gaillard, planning and zoning director, explained that city staff had mailed a request for qualification regarding the administration Nov. 9 to all known providers, as well as posting the RFQ in the newspaper, on the Georgia Local Government Access Marketplace, and on the city website.

The city had received three responses, and a team of three city employees had reviewed and scored the applications, Gaillard reported.

Between Grant Specialists’ 76, Carroll’s Consulting’s 42, and Peñate Consulting’s 41, staff had recommended the approval of Grant Specialists of Georgia.

Gaillard asserted that the city had worked with the grant consultant before, reporting that they were currently working on finalizing Tifton’s CHIP grant.

With the support of their new grant administrators, Gaillard was excited to apply for the $1,000,000 the city was seeking for homeowner rehab, but admitted the numbers might change once it had been more accurately determined how many houses needed help in the target area.

She stated that the consultants would get to work as soon as possible–in fact, the very reason they had organized the called meeting was to ensure they would start at the beginning of January, as the application could take several months on top of the other grants they would be overseeing, and they would need to have everything finalized by April 1.