In this edition

• COVID-19 Daily Stats and Regional Resources

• Status of the Alternate Care Site at the Cross Insurance Arena

• New Taxpayer Resource - Property Fraud Protection

• Updates on activities at County EMA 

• Community Development Block Grant emergency funds

COVID-19 Daily stats, rolling averages and regional resources

Cumberland County, has designed a comprehensive section of our website dedicated to regional COVID-19 data and resources. The goal was to create a page that collects state and local data in one convenient, easily searchable place. Constituents and businesses can find access to support services, available both statewide and in Cumberland County specifically; find ways to donate time, resources and money that will be used primarily in our community; find links to regional shopping and delivery services; find links to every town in our county's dedicated COVID-19 pages and the status of their municipal governments; and get daily statistical updates of the spread of the disease. We've been posting this data every day; it shows the growth in state and county numbers for cases, recoveries, hospitalizations and deaths, including charts that show Cumberland County's proportional share; current hospitalization, ICU and ventilator usage rates; and every five days we post 5 day trend charts, which health experts say are really valuable guideposts to understand how things are changing. Examples of these charts are below; you can see them once they're published every day at our website, or by following our Cumberland County Government Facebook page.

New Taxpayer Resource - Property Fraud Protection

This new FREE service, provided by the Cumberland County Register of Deeds, will alert you with an e-mail notification when a document is filed in the Cumberland County Clerks Recorder of Deeds office with your name on it.  To sign up, please click Property Fraud Alert  
 
Why would Property owners want this service:
 
"Property Fraud has become one of the fastest rowing financial crimes in the history of the United States.  So much so, that the federal government has convened a special task force to deal with property fraud as a type of white collar crime. "
 
By signing up for this free service you as the property owner will be advised if any documents are filed in the Registry of Deeds related to your ownership.

EMA Activities

Community Development Block Grant emergency funds

Cumberland County will receive $920,165 as part of the first wave of additional CDBG funds designated through the CARES Act. These funds are distributed based on the same formula that HUD uses when providing the County with our annual allocation. As such, the Town of Bridgton and the City of South Portland will receive a formula set-aside of these funds in the amount of $117,695 and $261,545 respectively.

The CDBG funds provided through the CARES Act are specifically designated for the prevention of, preparation for, and response to the coronavirus. All activities funded under the CDBG-CV funds need to comply with the standard CDBG regulations of serving low to moderate income individual in addition to the CDBG-CV requirements.

At a meeting on April 22, the MOC voted to approve two waivers to the usual process for administering funds, in order to get resources into the communities as quickly as possible. The first one allows the release of one application for the entire county, with a set-aside for Bridgton and South Portland built into the application. The applications will then be reviewed by the CDBG-CV Review Team made up of representatives from Bridgton, South Portland, and the Municipal Oversight Committee. The recommendations from the CDBG-CV Review Team will go directly to the County Commissioners for approval before submission to HUD.

The second waiver will allow non-profit organizations to apply for the CDBG-CV funds directly, as oppose to the traditional process of getting Town/City/County approval before applying. This waiver is being requested for two reasons; the shortened application window will not provide adequate time for the traditional Town/City/County
approval method; and, the County would like to encourage more County wide approaches to the prevention of, preparation for, and response to the coronavirus.

The goal of abbreviating the traditional CDBG allocation process is to cut several months off of the timeline while still providing a cohesive approach to addressing the impacts of the Coronavirus on our communities. The faster we can submit our Action Plan to HUD, the better chance we have of preventing a family from becoming homeless, a business from bankruptcy, and our safety-net providers from becoming overwhelmed.