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: When the pattern of grant awards leaves out a major area of the State, it h&s a c~hil]lng effect on future appllcetioas from that area. Why go to all the technical and political trouble to prepare, hold local publle hearings on, and submit an apDUnation if no ~ants at all are given to communities in your part of the State? Th~e's defense of the t~esent system whieh goes, "there are more grants down East because the~e are more ai~plications down £s_st% To that we would respond, athare are more applleatioas from down East because there are more grants given down East~. If the middle part of the State ware to know - up front - that they would receive a reasonable share of the f~nds, you can be sure there would be no ahortage of applications. ~l'ne Federal government went to a block grant concept to more evenly distribute funding all across the Nation and to allow each State to establi~ its own system foe awarding grants. After three cycles, it is time for North Carolina to more evenly distribute funding all am'oas the State - and to make that fair distribution a part of its system for awarding grants. ' ' ~nother important concern wd have about the present system is that the points' given foe eommunlt~ need wor.k against pockets of poverty in unineozpoeatnd areas, since the points given reflect the housing conditions and income of the County as a whole - and these a~e completely in'eievant to the low income residents in the ~pocket of poverty" area. There are a few other, less ~itical problems with the present system: (1) Of the total possible ntuuber of points in the ranking system (1000) too many of them (400) are awarded based on the subjective judgement of NItCD staff about the applieatioss~ eantents - and there was only a 108 point spread between the suoring community and the lowest scoring community funded. This mear~ that there will always be a question about how impartial the staff is in assisting applicants and in evaluating a@plications. ~'nat question aaa be minimized by a system of regional allocations. (2) The subjective c~iteria used by NRCD staff seems to change from c'~le to cycle - even when the system has not been changed. One would generally expect that a narrowly unsuccessful community in one cycle would be funded in the next cycle. But in the next c~Jcle~s ranking they might find themselves fa~ down the list of unsuccessful a@pliCants. Its like a completely new set of unpublished subjective c~iteria are being used in each cycle, l'ne results of the present system are too unpredietable.