Overland Park plans to partner with a community organization to administer its pilot grant program aimed at supporting residents who want to make their homes more energy efficient.
Last Wednesday, the Overland Park City Council Community Development Committee unanimously advanced an agreement with the East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corporation, or ECKAN, to administer its home weatherization pilot program.
Councilmember Fred Spears was absent from the meeting, and Councilmember Paul Lyons was filling in for Councilmember Sam Passer.
How would the pilot program work?
- ECKAN — an economic opportunity organization that works in several eastern Kansas communities, including Johnson County — already has a home weatherization program and has done some work in Overland Park before.
- Under the agreement, Overland Park would give the group its home weatherization fund to run the program on the city’s behalf.
- Ruanda McFerren, Overland Park’s grants program manager, said city staff believes partnering with ECKAN is a better use of funds than trying to start up a new operation from scratch. For instance, ECKAN already has connections with local contractors who would be doing the work.
- Overland Park approved its home weatherization pilot program earlier this year.
Overland Park earmarked $125,000 for the pilot
- The plan is to use money leftover from the city’s federal Community Development Block Grant fund to help a handful of low-income households make repairs to their homes to help increase energy efficiency.
- Each eligible household could get up to $15,000 through the city’s program to help with repairs and upgrades required to weatherize their homes.
- The pilot program could help 10 to 12 households through 2025, when the program expires. Both renters and homeowners are eligible under ECKAN’s rules.
- ECKAN also gets money annually from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation for its home weatherization improvement program.
Home weatherization can be costly
- Linda Wood, ECKAN’s director of weatherization, told the committee last week that the average home weatherization project costs about $8,300 in Overland Park.
- Recipients can use the money to add insulation and to replace toilets, water heaters and HVAC systems. Window and door replacements as well as weather stripping are also eligible expenses.
- “We try to seal up any places in the home that air can come in or air escapes,” Wood said. “We also address a lot of health and safety issues in homes. That could be unsafe heating sources, unsafe water heaters, smoke detectors.”
- ECKAN can also help with mold remediation using separate funding sources.
Next steps:
- The Overland Park City Council will have to sign the agreement before it goes into effect.
- The city council is expected to vote on it during its next regularly scheduled meeting on Oct. 16.
- McFerren said the city could decide to add more CDBG dollars to the pilot agreement with ECKAN in the future. Such an action would require more Community Development Committee and city council agreement.
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