HUD rules in favor of City of Fall River in Fiola complaint

According to a letter from Housing and Urban Development, a complaint issued by executive vice president of the Bristol County Economic Development Consultants, Ken Fiola, has been ruled in favor of the City of Fall River.

In issue 1, potential “discriminatory” actions of the City of Fall River for failure to use CDBG funds in accordance with the approved annual action plan, reprogramming of funds and failure to show evidence of job creation and retention, HUD determined that the City followed proper procedure for allocating CDBG funds. HUD also found no evidence that FRCDA discriminated against City residents.

In issue 2, failure of the City to disqualify the Fall River Redevelopment Authority’s application for funding because they did not submit the required documentation, HUD ruled that due to the fact that the City classified FRRA as a City department and did not submit documents pertinent to a non-profit, that it would not automatically disqualify its application.

In issue 3, failure to identify the apparent conflicts of interest of the FRRA application, HUD determined that Robert Smith who is Fall River’s Harbormaster, was not in a conflict concerning being on the Redevelopment Authority Board.

Concerning Fiola’s complaint that the current FRRA CDBG application of record clearly indicates that the FRRA will oversee and utilize two CDA employees to carry forward the FRRA activities and that this clearly violates the HUD and FRCDA conflict of interest provisions, HUD stated that a grantee and subrecipient share joint responsibility for carrying out permitted activities.

The HUD ruling: