SOUTH PORTLAND – The South Portland City Council has forwarded to Cumberland County government a $388,200 budget for 2013-2014 Community Development Block Grants that City Manager Jim Gailey calls a “ghost plan,” due to a lack of funding data from the federal government.

The final $480,310 budget includes $92,100 unspent from previous years. However, according to program coordinator Emily Freedman, the budget also assumes an 8.5 percent reduction in grant funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, due to automatic “sequestration” cuts that went into effect Jan. 1 when Congress failed to agree to a deficit reduction plan of its own. Although the austerity plan known as “the sequester” slashes $85.4 billion in spending this year, it does allow federal outlays to grow an average of $238.6 billion per year over the next decade.

Even so, the monkey wrench thrown into the works has delayed CDBG funding figures, which Gailey says the city usually received “by mid January.”

“Here it is April and we still don’t know for sure what the cuts will be,” he said. “We’re hearing 8.5 percent cut, we’re also hearing 5 percent, we’re even hearing flat funding. There’s even one report that there may be a 4 percent boost. So, we took what was the latest, greatest story coming out of HUD and went with it.

“We’re submitting an annual action plan that is, in a sense, a ghost plan, because the federal government will not tell us what we have to spend,” said Gailey.

Since 2006, South Portland has received 23 percent of the CDBG award made by HUD to Portland and must submit an action plan for those dollars to the county. The amounts forwarded to the Cumberland County Community Development Program this year include $11,352 for emergency housing rehabilitation, $363,462 for public facility improvements and $58,648 for program administration.

Although that’s well under the 20 percent cap set for planning and administration, this year’s budget does max the 15 percent limit on awards to public service agencies, at $58,200.

That forced South Portland’s Community Development Advisory Committee to make a series of hard cuts during a series of meetings over the past two months, although the pain was somewhat mitigated by the fact that some perennial applicants, such as the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Maine and the South Portland Housing Authority, did not submit funding requests this year.

Public service agency awards for 2013-2014 include: $15,000 to the Redbank Neighborhood Resource Hub to pay for personnel costs; $9,900 to South Portland’s General Assistance program to beef up its fuel fund; $8,900 to the South Portland Recreation Department to cover 30 program scholarships to underprivileged children; $7,500 to the Southern Maine Agency on Aging for its Meals on Wheels program, which feeds about 125 homebound city seniors; and $4,500 each to the Community Counseling Center Trauma Intervention Program, the Family Crisis Services Enhanced Police Intervention Collaboration, and the Skillin Elementary School Parent-Teacher Association to help fund its “backpack program,” which helps feed 24 needy families each weekend, along with $3,400 to the South Portland Transportation Department to cover the cost of 350 free 10-ride bus passes distributed by general assistance.

Because of limited funds, every agency had its request cut, in amounts ranging from $40 (Redbank Hub) to $7,500 (Meals on Wheels). Although most agencies will get more than they received in 2012, some considerably more, such as general assistance (up $5,000) and recreation scholarships (up $4,000), others will get less. These include the Community Counseling Center, and Family Crisis Services, both down $500, and Meals on Wheels, down $2,500.

Public facility improvements for the coming year include: $230,000 to South Portland Public Works to help rebuild a little more than 2,000 feet of sidewalk on Broadway between Wescott Road and Glen Way; $76,835 to the South Portland Department of Parks and Recreation for create a new city park out of a vacant lot next to the Redbank Community Center; $25,275 to the parks and recreation department to build the Brick Hill Basketball Court, a half-court to go up near the new Redbank Park with help from the Opportunity Alliance and Community Partnerships for Protecting Children; and $20,000 to repaint the former Hutchins School, which is leased by the Mad Horse Theater Company.

The emergency housing rehabilitation plan will pay to overhaul heating system repair or replacement for up to two single-family homes in the city, pending income qualification. Funds are reserved for residents “who might be facing a no-heat emergency” due to a broken or malfunctioning heating system.