Orangeburg County gets $1M grant

Orangeburg County recently received a $1 million grant from the Community Planning and Development Program, a division of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Orangeburg County works hard to go after grant funding to improve the county without putting any more burden on the taxpayers, but making strides to improve what we have,” Orangeburg County Administrator Harold Young said.

The Community Planning and Development Program’s webpage says it, “seeks to develop viable communities by promoting integrated approaches that provide decent housing, a suitable living environment and expand economic opportunities for low and moderate income persons. The primary means towards this end is the development of partnerships among all levels of government and the private sector, including for-profit and non-profit organizations.”

Young said the money, “usually flows through the Lower Savannah Council of Governments, and it’s for us to do different studies within the Lower Savannah region, as well as Orangeburg County, to basically produce planning documents and other things that go towards engineering to be able to help us produce projects within the region.”

While there are no immediate plans for the funding, in the past the money has been used “to do upgrades to the roadways, and sidewalks and stuff like that to create walking trail plans, to create plans for pedestrian trail access.”