City of Colusa conducting income survey in coming weeks
Oct. 2—The city of Colusa has begun the process of facilitating an income survey with the hopes of demonstrating the need to receive funding to repair aging infrastructure throughout town.
According to a release issued by the city of Colusa, staff have identified over the past year a series of grants with the potential to fix aging infrastructure such as streets, sewers, sidewalks and more, but to secure these funds they must demonstrate need.
To do so, the Colusa City Council gave City Manager Jesse Cain the green light in April to hire Rural Community Assistance Partnership to complete an income study to measure the number of low-to-moderate income households, otherwise known as LMI.
To perform the survey, this neutral party will be reaching out to citizens in the next several weeks.
"If you receive an income survey in the mail, I would encourage you to fill it out and drop it back in the mail," said Mayor Josh Hill. "This income survey may open up funding with the potential to help us get our infrastructure up to date, so it couldn't be more important."
Survey results will be collected via mail or in-person through door to door visits and all of the information gathered will remain confidential and anonymous.
According to the release, the LMI measurement takes a look at how much money all of the earners in the household contribute. In California, a household that makes less than the median household income of $75,235 would be a consideration for low, moderate, or even a poverty classification.
"A community is considered 'extremely low-income' if 60 percent of the citizens make less than the LMI rate and 'very low income' if they make 50 percent or less," the release said. "Generally, traunches of specific funding open up if a jurisdiction qualifies as very low income. Currently, Colusa's LMI rate issued by the American Census Survey is 47.7 percent with a margin of error of +/- 6.2 percent. This means that Colusa's true LMI rate could actually be as high as 53.9 percent or as low as 41.5 percent."
A presentation about the survey will be given by Jean Thompson, rural development specialist III for the Rural Community Assistance Corporation, at the next city council meeting, scheduled for Oct. 5, starting at 6 p.m. The meeting will be held in the city council chambers at City Hall, 425 Webster St., Colusa, but due to limited capacity members of the community are encouraged to view the meeting remotely. To join the meeting via Zoom, visit https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87521411450 or call 1-669-900-9128.
