Tommy Gregory has devoted the past 42 years to securing grant funding from the federal government.
With the possibility of budget cuts looming in President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget, Gregory is bracing himself for the worst.
“Trump’s budget, I went through it. He’s going to eliminate CDBG (Community Development Block Grants); we write those grants. The HOME program, we write those grants. The low-end housing tax credit program, we’re involved in that as well,” said Gregory, 69, president of Gregory & Associates Inc. of Greenwood.
Even before the 2016 election, the HOME program — which provides assistance for low-income homeowners for new or remodeled housing — had already been cutback over several years, he said.
“It’s just been whittled back and whittled back. It’s a process,” Gregory said.
“CDBG is not going to be eliminated, it just can’t be. There’s too much pressure from the municipalities — that’s how politics works,” he said.
Still, the defunding of the block grant programs has caused Gregory to lose some sleep.
“They don’t do a lot of compromise up in Washington any more. I tell people, I hate the Democrats, the Republicans and the independents. I hate them all, they just won’t talk to each other,” he said.
Last year, the HOME program got cut back in Mississippi. Out of 110 HOME applications statewide, just eight were funded. Greenwood just managed to miss out, Gregory said.
“It’s hard to compete in this environment,” he said.
Gregory bristles at a statement from a Trump administration official that the programs are not doing a good enough job of helping the people the programs were intended to.
He said many of the small towns in the Delta do not have a tax base sufficient to fund water and sewer system improvements by themselves.
Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Agency can offer loans, Gregory said, most smaller municipalities still cannot afford to pay back such loans on costly infrastructure projects.
Gregory said he likes to joke with his friends that if the cutbacks in federal grant funding continue, he will considering retiring.
“I don’t want to retire. I love being able to make a difference for these communities. I just enjoy it. I enjoy trying to make a difference,” he said.
Over the years, Gregory & Associates has secured more than $100 million in funding for projects all across the Delta, Gregory said.
Education, transportation and healthcare are interconnected and have to work for a community to succeed, regardless of race or wealth, he said.
Gregory provides a parable. “You have a sewer system. The rich folks and the poor folks are all tied together,” citing Greenwood’s 24-inch force main that went under the Yazoo River. The force main was funded with CDBG and U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s Section 592 funding.
“That main did help the rich people ,but it helped all the poor people too,” he said.
Gregory, a native of Greenwood, said he learned a great deal from his mentor, the late Charlie Deaton, a Greenwood attorney and one-time state legislator.
“‘Politics means compromise,’ Charlie said.” Nowadays it doesn’t work that way,” Gregory said.
• Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
